J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was first published in three volumes.
The volumes were titled The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. George Allen & Unwin published them separately between July 1954 and October 1955, although Tolkien regarded the work as one novel rather than three independent books.
The division was largely practical. Paper shortages and the high cost of producing a very long book influenced the publishing plan. Each volume contains two of the novel’s six internal books, followed by appendices in the final volume.
The three-volume format is sometimes mistaken for a trilogy in the sense of three separately conceived stories. Tolkien’s narrative is a continuous work, and the volumes were not originally designed as unrelated sequels. The familiar labels “trilogy” and “three-volume novel” therefore describe its publication history more accurately than its underlying composition.