The Harvard Lampoon

The Harvard Lampoon is America's oldest humour magazine, founded in 1876 at Harvard University. The magazine has produced an extraordinary number of comedy writers, performers and media professionals who have gone on to shape American humour, including writers for The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and numerous other shows. Bored Of The Rings is their classic parody of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, first published in 1969. Written by Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney (who later co-founded National Lampoon magazine), the book is a gleefully irreverent send-up of Tolkien's epic, replacing hobbits with "boggies" and high fantasy with low comedy in a way that has delighted readers for over fifty years. Available as both a book and an audiobook, Bored Of The Rings remains a classic of literary parody — essential listening and reading for Tolkien fans with a sense of humour and anyone who appreciates comedy that proves nothing is too sacred to be mocked.