This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history. Further information will also be found in the selection from the Red Book of Westmarch that has already been published, under the title of The Hobbit. That story was derived from the earlier chapters of the Red Book, composed by Bilbo himself, the first Hobbit to become famous in the world at large, and called by him There and Back Again, since they told of his journey into the East and his return: an adventure which later involved all the Hobbits in the great events of that Age that are here related.

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The first volume in J.R.R.Tolkien's epic adventure The Lord of the Rings.

'The English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and those who are going to read them.'

'An extraordinary book. It deals with a stupendous theme. It leads us through a succession of strange and astonishing episodes, some of them magnificent, in a region where everything is invented, forest, moor, river, wilderness, town, and the races which inhabit them.'

'To have created so enthralling an epic-romance, with its own mythology, with such diversity of scene and character, such imaginative invention and description, and such supernatural meaning underlying the wealth of incident, is a most remarkable feat.'

'Masterpiece ? Oh yes, I've no doubt about that.'

NOTE ON THE TEXT

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

PROLOGUE Concerning Hobbits, and other matters

BOOK ONE

I A Long-expected Party

II The Shadow of the Past

  III Three is Company

IV A Short Cut to Mushrooms

V A Conspiracy Unmasked

VI The Old Forest

  VII In the House of Tom Bombadil

 VIII Fog on the Barrow-downs

IX At the Sign of The Prancing Pony

X Strider

XI A Knife in the Dark

  XII Flight to the Ford

BOOK TWO

I Many Meetings

II The Council of Elrond

  III The Ring Goes South

IV A Journey in the Dark

V The Bridge of Khazad-dun

VI Lothlrrien

  VII The Mirror of Galadriel

 VIII Farewell to Lrrien

IX The Great River

X The Breaking: of the Fellowship