Crossword Dictionary
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by J.R.R. Tolkien, which was later fitted as a trilogy. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier fantasy book The Hobbit, and soon developed into a much larger story. At publication, it was divided into The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.
Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, with much of it during World War II, it was originally published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955. It has since been reprinted numerous times and translated into at least 38 different languages, becoming one of the most popular works of twentieth-century literature.
The action in The Lord of the Rings is set in what the author conceived to be the lands of the real Earth, inhabited by humanity but placed in a fictional past, before familiar history but after the fall of his version of Atlantis, Númenor. Tolkien gave this setting a modern English name, Middle-earth, a rendering of the Old English Middangeard.
The title refers to the story's main antagonist, the Dark Lord Sauron, who, in an earlier age, created the One Ring to rule the other Rings of Power given to Men, Dwarves, and Elves, in his campaign to conquer all of Middle-earth. From homely beginnings in the Shire, a hobbit land reminiscent of the English countryside, the story ranges across Middle-earth, following the quest to destroy the One Ring, seen mainly through the eyes of the hobbits Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin.