Books

Boston / Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin Company / The Riverside Press, 1967. First printings (stated) all; first edition thus. Near fine in near fine jackets.. Handsome set of the first printings (all) of the second US edition of the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, comprising THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, THE TWO TOWERS, and THE RETURN OF THE KING — all review copies. Tolkien's Middle Earth grew not only from his experiences in World War I and studies as a professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, but from his childhood hobby of constructed languages (conlangs). Tolkien argued in his essay "A Secret Vice" that "for perfect construction of an art-language it is found necessary to construct at least in outline a mythology" along with it. In other words, "your language construction will breed a mythology." Middle Earth sprang into being in part so that Tolkien could draw on a mature culture, history, and mythology for his beloved conlangs. As a result, we have Bilbo, Frodo,…

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of three volumes of the epic novel The Lord of the Rings by the English author J.R.R. Tolkien. It is followed by The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The story begins with the discovery of the One Ring, which had been lost for centuries, and follows a group of heroes who set out on a quest to destroy it and prevent the dark lord Sauron from fulfilling his malevolent designs.

The primary method to authenticate first editions of The Lord of the Rings involves inspecting the publication details within each volume. Look for the publisher's name, typically stated as 'George Allen & Unwin Ltd,' on the title page. Verify the dates on the back of the title page: the initial two books should bear the 1954 date, while the third should display 1955, without any subsequent dates. A common query we encounter concerns editions where later books in the series are listed on the dust jacket. This situation often prompts the question, 'Can it still be a first edition?' For many books—such as James Bond novels or the Harry Potter series—it's crucial to ensure that the dust jacket or the author's list of works doesn't mention books published afterward, as this would indicate that your copy isn't a first edition. However, The Lord of the Rings deviates significantly from this standard. As the series was originally conceived as a single lengthy book and divided into three due to financial considerations, the publishers anticipated subsequent releases and utilized the dust jacket flaps to advertise them.