The first volume of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, was published on 29 July 1954.
The volume begins with Bilbo Baggins’s birthday party and follows Frodo Baggins after he inherits the One Ring. Frodo eventually leaves the Shire with Samwise Gamgee, Merry, and Pippin, beginning the dangerous journey that forms the opening movement of the larger story.
The work was issued in three volumes because of postwar paper shortages and publishing considerations. The other two volumes were The Two Towers and The Return of the King, published in 1954 and 1955.
The three-volume structure does not make the work a conventional trilogy with three unrelated stories. Tolkien regarded it as one long novel, divided for practical publication reasons.