J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was published in three volumes from 1954 to 1955.
The Fellowship of the Ring appeared on 29 July 1954, followed by The Two Towers on 11 November 1954. The Return of the King completed the publication sequence on 20 October 1955. Although readers commonly call it a trilogy, Tolkien regarded it as one novel divided into three volumes because of its length and printing costs.
The story follows the quest to destroy the One Ring, with Frodo Baggins carrying it toward Mordor. The three-volume structure can sometimes cause confusion about the date: the complete work was not available in print until 1955, even though its first volume appeared in 1954.
Tolkien had worked on the manuscript for years after The Hobbit’s success. The finished work became one of the defining English-language fantasy novels of the twentieth century.