Bilbo Baggins celebrates his birthday and leaves the Ring to Frodo, his heir. 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 ta… See more

Although a major work in itself, The Lord of the Rings was only the last movement of a much older set of narratives Tolkien had worked on since 1917 encompassing The Silmarillion, in a process he described as mythopoeia… See more

A dispute with his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, led Tolkien to offer the work to William Collins in 1950. Tolkien intended The Silmarillion (itself largely unrevised at this point) to be published along with The Lord of the … See more