J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is published in three standard volumes.
The volumes are titled The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. They form one continuous narrative about the One Ring and the attempt to destroy it, but Tolkien’s publisher issued them separately rather than as one physical book.
The first two volumes appeared in 1954, and the third followed in 1955. Each volume is divided into two books, so the complete work contains six internal books. This sometimes causes confusion: the familiar “trilogy” refers to the three published volumes, while the internal structure has six numbered books plus appendices.
The films directed by Peter Jackson also use a three-part structure, but their adaptations do not correspond perfectly to the book divisions. The titles and order of Tolkien’s three volumes remain the standard way to identify the printed work.