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The Lord of the Rings #3
The Return of the King
The Lord of the Rings is J.R.R. Tolkien's greatest three-volume epic set in the Third Age of Middle-earth - a world inhabited by many strange beings, including hobbits, an ancient people smaller than dwarves, cheerful, peace-loving and shy. Since its original publication, this work has caught the imagination of readers of all ages and walks of life. It is an adventure story, an adult fairy tale, a classic myth, which Michael Straight has called on of the "very few works of genius in recent literature."
In response to the widespread interest and enthusiasm evoked by The Lord of the Rings, Professor Tolkien has prepared this second edition, making a number of emendations in the text and providing a new foreword, new appendices and an index.
The Third Age of Middle-earth is a world receptive to poets, scholars, children, and all other people of good will. Donald Barr has described it as "a scrubbed morning world, and a ringing nightmare world...especially sunlit, and shadowed by perils very fundamental, of a peculiarly uncompounded darkness."
The story of this world is one of high and heroic adventure. W.H. Auden has said: "The first thing on asks of an adventure story is that the adventure should be various and exciting...Mr. Tolkien's invention is unflagging." And C.S. Lewis: "If Ariosto rivalled it in invention (in fact he does not) he would still lack its heroic seriousness. No imaginary world has been projected which is at once so multifarious and so true."
Lewis compared The Lord of the Rings to Orlando Furioso. Barr has compared it to Beowulf, Auden to The Thirty-Nine Steps, Naomi Mitchison to the Morte d'Arthur, Richard Hughes to the Faerie Queene. Each reader can find in it something he is looking for, but the book is sui generis - a triumph of imaginative genius, which exists within its own framework and on its own terms.
In response to the widespread interest and enthusiasm evoked by The Lord of the Rings, Professor Tolkien has prepared this second edition, making a number of emendations in the text and providing a new foreword, new appendices and an index.
The Third Age of Middle-earth is a world receptive to poets, scholars, children, and all other people of good will. Donald Barr has described it as "a scrubbed morning world, and a ringing nightmare world...especially sunlit, and shadowed by perils very fundamental, of a peculiarly uncompounded darkness."
The story of this world is one of high and heroic adventure. W.H. Auden has said: "The first thing on asks of an adventure story is that the adventure should be various and exciting...Mr. Tolkien's invention is unflagging." And C.S. Lewis: "If Ariosto rivalled it in invention (in fact he does not) he would still lack its heroic seriousness. No imaginary world has been projected which is at once so multifarious and so true."
Lewis compared The Lord of the Rings to Orlando Furioso. Barr has compared it to Beowulf, Auden to The Thirty-Nine Steps, Naomi Mitchison to the Morte d'Arthur, Richard Hughes to the Faerie Queene. Each reader can find in it something he is looking for, but the book is sui generis - a triumph of imaginative genius, which exists within its own framework and on its own terms.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published October 20, 1955
About the author
J.R.R. Tolkien
521 books65k followersJohn Ronald Reuel Tolkien: writer, artist, scholar, linguist. Known to millions around the world as the author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent most of his life teaching at the University of Oxford where he was a distinguished academic in the fields of Old and Middle English and Old Norse. His creativity, confined to his spare time, found its outlet in fantasy works, stories for children, poetry, illustration and invented languages and alphabets.
Tolkien’s most popular works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in Middle-earth, an imagined world with strangely familiar settings inhabited by ancient and extraordinary peoples. Through this secondary world Tolkien writes perceptively of universal human concerns – love and loss, courage and betrayal, humility and pride – giving his books a wide and enduring appeal.
Tolkien was an accomplished amateur artist who painted for pleasure and relaxation. He excelled at landscapes and often drew inspiration from his own stories. He illustrated many scenes from The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, sometimes drawing or painting as he was writing in order to visualize the imagined scene more clearly.
Tolkien was a professor at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford for almost forty years, teaching Old and Middle English, as well as Old Norse and Gothic. His illuminating lectures on works such as the Old English epic poem, Beowulf, illustrate his deep knowledge of ancient languages and at the same time provide new insights into peoples and legends from a remote past.
Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in 1892 to English parents. He came to England aged three and was brought up in and around Birmingham. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 1915 and saw active service in France during the First World War before being invalided home. After the war he pursued an academic career teaching Old and Middle English. Alongside his professional work, he invented his own languages and began to create what he called a mythology for England; it was this ‘legendarium’ that he would work on throughout his life. But his literary work did not start and end with Middle-earth, he also wrote poetry, children’s stories and fairy tales for adults. He died in 1973 and is buried in Oxford where he spent most of his adult life.
Tolkien’s most popular works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in Middle-earth, an imagined world with strangely familiar settings inhabited by ancient and extraordinary peoples. Through this secondary world Tolkien writes perceptively of universal human concerns – love and loss, courage and betrayal, humility and pride – giving his books a wide and enduring appeal.
Tolkien was an accomplished amateur artist who painted for pleasure and relaxation. He excelled at landscapes and often drew inspiration from his own stories. He illustrated many scenes from The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, sometimes drawing or painting as he was writing in order to visualize the imagined scene more clearly.
Tolkien was a professor at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford for almost forty years, teaching Old and Middle English, as well as Old Norse and Gothic. His illuminating lectures on works such as the Old English epic poem, Beowulf, illustrate his deep knowledge of ancient languages and at the same time provide new insights into peoples and legends from a remote past.
Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in 1892 to English parents. He came to England aged three and was brought up in and around Birmingham. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 1915 and saw active service in France during the First World War before being invalided home. After the war he pursued an academic career teaching Old and Middle English. Alongside his professional work, he invented his own languages and began to create what he called a mythology for England; it was this ‘legendarium’ that he would work on throughout his life. But his literary work did not start and end with Middle-earth, he also wrote poetry, children’s stories and fairy tales for adults. He died in 1973 and is buried in Oxford where he spent most of his adult life.
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