[3][T 3] For economic reasons, it was first published over the course of a year, from 29 July 1954 to 20 October 1955, in three volumes rather than one,[3][4] under the titles The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King; The Silmarillion appeared only after the author's death.

Gandalf (a wizard) suspects it is a Ring of Power; seventeen years later, he confirms it was lost by the Dark Lord Sauron and counsels Frodo to take it away from the Shire.

Elrond chooses companions for him: Sam, Merry, and Pippin; Gandalf; the Men Aragorn and Boromir, son of the Steward of Gondor; the Elf Legolas; and the Dwarf Gimli, representing the Free Peoples of the West.

Tolkien presents The Lord of the Rings within a fictional frame story where he is not the original author, but merely the translator of part of an ancient document, the Red Book of Westmarch.

Having rejected his contemporary drafts for The Silmarillion, putting Roverandom on hold, and accepting Farmer Giles of Ham, Allen & Unwin continued to ask for more stories about hobbits.

These include verse and songs of many genres: for wandering, marching to war, drinking, and having a bath; narrating ancient myths, riddles, prophecies, and magical incantations; and of praise and lament (elegy).

According to The New York Times, Barbara Remington's cover designs for Ballantine's paperback editions "achieved mass-cult status in the 1960s, particularly on college campuses" across America.

[28] Commentators have attempted to identify literary and topological antecedents for characters, places and events in Tolkien's writings; he acknowledged that he had enjoyed adventure stories by authors such as John Buchan and Rider Haggard.

[29][30][31] The Arts and Crafts polymath William Morris was a major influence,[T 10] and Tolkien undoubtedly made use of some real place-names, such as Bag End, the name of his aunt's home.

[34] Scholars and critics have identified many themes in the book with its complex interlaced narrative, including a reversed quest,[35][36] the struggle of good and evil,[37] death and immortality,[38] fate and free will,[39] the addictive danger of power,[40] and various aspects of Christianity such as the presence of three Christ figures, for prophet, priest, and king, as well as elements like hope and redemptive suffering.

[T 12] To those who supposed that the book was an allegory of events in the 20th century, Tolkien replied in the foreword to the Second Edition that it was not, saying he preferred "history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers."

Some commentators have criticized the book for being a story about men for boys, with no significant women; or about a purely rural world with no bearing on modern life in cities; of containing no sign of religion; or of racism.

Other commentators responded by noting that there are three powerful women in the book, Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen; that life, even in rural Hobbiton, is not idealized; that Christianity is a pervasive theme; and that Tolkien was sharply anti-racist both in peacetime and during the Second World War, while Middle-earth is evidently polycultural.

After Milton Waldman, his contact at Collins, expressed the belief that The Lord of the Rings itself "urgently wanted cutting", Tolkien eventually demanded that they publish the book in 1952.

[49] Collins did not; and so Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin, saying, "I would gladly consider the publication of any part of the stuff", fearing his work would never see the light of day.

[T 14] However, a month later he wrote a note published at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring and later drew a cover illustration, both of which identified the pair as Minas Morgul and Orthanc.

In a letter to the poet W. H. Auden, who famously reviewed the final volume in 1956,[58] Tolkien himself made use of the term "trilogy" for the work[T 15] though he did at other times consider this incorrect, as it was written and conceived as a single book.

[70] In 2004, for the 50th Anniversary Edition, Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, under supervision from Christopher Tolkien, studied and revised the text to eliminate as many errors and inconsistencies as possible, some of which had been introduced by well-meaning compositors of the first printing in 1954, and never been corrected.

[T 19] From 1988 to 1992 Christopher Tolkien published the surviving drafts of The Lord of the Rings, chronicling and illuminating with commentary the stages of the text's development, in volumes 6–9 of his History of Middle-earth series.

[78] W. H. Auden, a former pupil of Tolkien's and an admirer of his writings, regarded The Lord of the Rings as a "masterpiece", further stating that in some cases it outdid the achievement of John Milton's Paradise Lost.

[80][81] On the other hand, in 1955, the Scottish poet Edwin Muir attacked The Return of the King, writing that "All the characters are boys masquerading as adult heroes ... and will never come to puberty ... Hardly one of them knows anything about women", causing Tolkien to complain angrily to his publisher.

[13] The scholar of humanities Brian Rosebury analysed Tolkien's prose style in detail, showing that it was generally quite plain, varying to suit the voices of the different characters, and rising to a heroic register for special moments.

The book has remained so ever since, ranking as the most popular works of fiction of the twentieth century, judged by all of three different measures: sales, library borrowings, and reader surveys.

[97][98] A variety of filmmakers considered adapting Tolkien's book, among them Stanley Kubrick, who thought it unfilmable,[99][100] Michelangelo Antonioni,[101] Jim Henson,[102] Heinz Edelmann,[103] and John Boorman.

[107][108] In Finland, a live action television miniseries, Hobitit, was broadcast in 1993 based on The Lord of the Rings, with a flashback to Bilbo's encounter with Gollum in The Hobbit.

A large-scale musical theatre adaptation, The Lord of the Rings, was first staged in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 2006 and opened in London in June 2007; it was a commercial failure.

[129] The opus has spawned many imitations, such as The Sword of Shannara, which Lin Carter called "the single most cold-blooded, complete rip-off of another book that I have ever read,"[130] as well as alternate interpretations of the story, such as The Last Ringbearer.

[147] In 1969, Tolkien sold the merchandising rights to The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit to United Artists under an agreement stipulating a lump sum payment of £10,000[148] (equivalent to £208,000 in 2023) plus a 7.5% royalty after costs,[149] payable to Allen & Unwin and the author.

Since then all "authorised" merchandise has been signed off by Tolkien Enterprises, although the intellectual property rights of the specific likenesses of characters and other imagery from various adaptations is generally held by the adaptors.

[151] Outside commercial exploitation from adaptations, from the late 1960s onwards there has been an increasing variety of original licensed merchandise, with posters and calendars created by illustrators such as Barbara Remington.