Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy saga by the British author J. R. R. Tolkien, his most popular work and a sequel to his popular fantasy novel, The Hobbit. more...

The Lord of the Rings was written during World War II and originally published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955. It is perhaps the most popular work in twentieth-century literature. Although a major work in itself, The Lord of the Rings is merely the last movement of a larger mythological cycle which Tolkien called his legendarium. The action is mainly set in what is conceived to be the lands of the real Earth inhabited by humanity but placed in a fictional time. Tolkien called this setting by a modern English rendering of the Old English Middangeard: Middle-earth.

Tolkien described the Lord of the Rings as "much the largest, and I hope also in proportion the best, of the entire cycle". Some Tolkien biographers, however, regard The Silmarillion as the true "work of his heart" as it provides the historical and linguistic context for the more popular work and for his constructed languages, and occupied the greater part of Tolkien's time.

Three film adaptations have been made of the story told by the books: the first, by animator Ralph Bakshi, was released in 1978 (as the first part of what was originally intended to be a two-part adaptation of the story); the second, a 1980 television special; and the third, director Peter Jackson's film trilogy, released in three installments in 2001, 2002, and 2003. There are also two Collectible Card Games and multiple video games that take place in the Middle-earth.

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