The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien's three-volume epic, is set in the imaginary world of Middle-earth - home to many strange beings, and most notably hobbits, a peace-loving "little people," cheerful and shy. Since its original British publication in 1954-55, the saga has entranced readers of all ages. It is at once a classic myth and a modern fairy tale. Critic Michael Straight has hailed it as one of the "very few works of genius in recent literature." Middle-earth is a world receptive to poets, scholars, children, and all other people of good will. Donald Barr has described it as "a scrubbed morning world, and a ringing nightmare world...especially sunlit, and shadowed by perils very fundamental, of a peculiarly uncompounded darkness." The story of ths world is one of high and heroic adventure. Barr compared it to Beowulf, C.S. Lewis to Orlando Furioso, W.H. Auden to The Thirty-nine Steps. In fact the saga is sui generis - a triumph of imagination which springs to life within its own framework and on its own terms.

• The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings
• The Return of the King: Being theThird Part of the Lord of the Rings
• The Hobbit: Pocket Edition
• The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
• The Silmarillion
• Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth
• The Hobbit: Illustrated Edition
• Tales from the Perilous Realm
• The Great Tales of Middle-earth: Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, and The Fall of Gondolin
• The Lord of the Rings