The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)
“A retired Oxford professor invented an entire world, two complete languages, and a mythology older than Greek — and then buried it all inside the most beloved adventure story of the twentieth century.”
At a Glance
In the Third Age of Middle-earth, a hobbit named Frodo Baggins inherits the One Ring — a weapon of absolute power forged by the Dark Lord Sauron — and must carry it across a world of war and ruin to the volcanic mountain where it was made, the only place it can be destroyed. Nine companions set out with him. The Fellowship fractures. Frodo and his gardener Samwise Gamgee continue alone, guided by the treacherous creature Gollum. Meanwhile, kingdoms fall, ancient kings return, and the War of the Ring consumes the whole of Middle-earth. The Ring is destroyed, but nothing ends cleanly: Frodo is wounded beyond healing and departs into the West.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Published in three volumes (1954-1955) to modest but positive reception. It sold slowly through the 1950s, then in the 1960s an unauthorized paperback edition in the United States created a countercultural phenomenon — students at Berkeley and Cambridge wrote 'Frodo Lives' on walls. Since then it has never been out of print. It has sold over 150 million copies, is regularly voted the greatest novel of the twentieth century in British polls, and essentially founded the commercial fantasy genre as it exists today.
Diction Profile
Ranges from the conversational warmth of the Shire to the formal elevation of elven ceremony and the archaic thunder of dwarvish oath-making — the entire spectrum of English literary registers within one work
High but concentrated