The Fellowship of the Ring
core novel 1954 Middle-earth
Record
| First published | 1954 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.41 (3,236,162 ratings, collected 2026-09-11) |
| Page count | 398 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780345339706 |
| First-edition date | 1954-07-29 |
| First-edition publisher | George Allen & Unwin |
| First-edition country | UK |
Synopsis
The Fellowship of the Ring is the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, published in 1954. It follows the hobbit Frodo Baggins, who inherits a plain-seeming ring from his cousin Bilbo Baggins, only to learn from Gandalf that it is in fact the One Ring, an object of immense and corrupting power lost long ago by the Dark Lord Sauron. Urged to leave the Shire before Sauron's servants can find him, Frodo sets out toward the elven refuge of Rivendell, where a council decides the Ring must be carried to Mount Doom in Mordor and destroyed in the fires where it was forged. To aid him, a Fellowship of nine is formed: four hobbits, Gandalf, the men Aragorn and Boromir, the elf Legolas, and the dwarf Gimli, who set out from Rivendell toward the dangers between them and Mordor.
Where it sits
- Universe: Middle-earth
- Series: The Lord of the Rings core; position 1 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
Notes
- From the series record (The Lord of the Rings): Published 1954-1955 in three volumes; structurally one novel issued as a trilogy.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Lord of the Rings: position 1 of 3: next The Two Towers (1954)
Sources
← Middle-earth dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.