In what year was The Two Towers published?

The Two Towers was published in 1954. George Allen & Unwin released the second volume of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in the United Kingdom on 11 November 1954.

Although commonly called a trilogy, The Lord of the Rings was written as a single large work and divided into three volumes for publication and economic reasons. The first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, appeared in July 1954. The Two Towers followed later that same year, and The Return of the King completed the British publication in 1955.

The volume contains Books Three and Four, covering the aftermath of the Fellowship’s breaking. Its story follows Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli as they pursue Merry and Pippin, while Frodo and Sam continue toward Mordor with Gollum as their guide.

The year can cause confusion because publication dates differed by country. The American edition of The Two Towers appeared in 1955, but the original British edition—and the standard answer to this question—was published in 1954. The title itself was also deliberately somewhat ambiguous, with Tolkien considering several possible pairs of towers.