Tolkien's Importance to History

[LadyBrooke]

In my European History class, we are currently doing our second book reports, this time on authors after 1800. One of the authors is J.R.R. Tolkien and LotR/TH. I chose LoTR. Looking at the other books on the list some of the other books are obvious why they're on list like Mein Kempf or the Communist Manifesto. So why is this book important to European History?

Of course, LotR started the modern fantasy movement which is why it is important to literary history but why is it important to history in general is a harder question to answer. There have debates over whether or not his private letters and papers to other people are covered by copyright but that's not that important except to Tolkien fans. There is an international fandom but that is once again not so much history as culture.

So thoughts? Why do you all think it's important to history?