Every Version of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

The book that built a world

J.R.R. Tolkien published The Fellowship of the Ring in July 1954, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings. He had spent over a decade writing it, building on the mythology he began in The Silmarillion and the lighter adventure of The Hobbit (1937). The story follows Frodo Baggins, a hobbit of the Shire, who inherits a magic ring from his uncle Bilbo and discovers it is the One Ring, forged by the Dark Lord Sauron to control all others. With the wizard Gandalf and a fellowship of men, elves, dwarves, and fellow hobbits, Frodo sets out to carry it to Mordor and destroy it.

Tolkien drew on Old and Middle English, Norse mythology, and the English countryside to build Middle-earth. The book was no overnight commercial hit, but through the 1960s it became a cult phenomenon, particularly on American college campuses. That slow burn of popularity is what eventually made it adaptable: first in animation, then in radio, then in one of the most celebrated film productions of the twenty-first century. Every version starts from the same source but finds different things worth keeping.