The Lord of the Rings books were written in a special order. The series was actually a cycle that began with a novel called The Hobbit. Many of J.R.R. Tolkien’s purist readers felt he had taken too many liberties with the original story by adding new aspects and stories from his own imagination. Personally, I felt this was a bad decision on his part from a marketing standpoint as I feel they could have been published as one volume as the story is all one big adventure with a beginning and an end, not simply 3 different adventures contained within a book with no particular order to them.”
Would you like to read the lord of the rings book series? Have you been searching for where to getthe lord of the rings books in order? Are you clueless about where to start reading the lord of the rings novel series? This post will serve as a guide on how you should read the lord of the rings series as you will get the hobbit and lord of the rings books in order. The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by J.R.R. Tolkien, which was later fitted as a trilogy. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien’s earlier fantasy book The Hobbit, and soon developed into a much larger story.
Table of Contents
Lord of The Rings Books in Order
“Frodo Lives.” I have a hazy memory of the phrase — maybe it was on an old pin, maybe one of my parents mentioned it — but it entered my life some time close to the first “Lord of the Rings” movie. It was hard for my kid brain to believe that the fantasy epic was ever an underground thing. Having fallen asleep both in a packed theatre during “Fellowship of the Ring” and while my mom read the Tom Bombadil chapters aloud to me before bed, my younger self was convinced that I was the only person in the world who didn’t get the whole Middle-earth thing.
Of course, Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies were among many early ’00s big-hitters that helped what was once deemed “nerd culture” completely eclipse everything else in the mainstream. The “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” films came as what you could call the end of a decades-long process: The books percolated through pop culture, inspiring and influencing close to every depiction of orcs, elves and what-have-you that followed.
Bits and threads were scattered and weaved through 10-cent novels, role-playing games and ’80s kid-fantasy films. Like Bilbo, the ideas of Middle-earth went there and came back again, emerging on the silver screen owing as much to the source material as to the countless derivations, rip-offs and homages that preceded the films.
It’s fine that the movies aren’t super strict adaptations, but their cultural impact has had a curious effect on how people think of the books. For instance, many moviegoers might not know that “The Hobbit” was written before “The Lord of the Rings,” or that the former is way more of a children’s story on the page than the three movie adaptations would suggest. Without criticizing Jackson’s movies, it’s fair to say they’ve muddied the waters a bit.
If you want to read the books and immerse yourself deeply in the world that John Ronald Reuel Tolkien created, you’ll need to understand some things about the man, his family and their shared vision of what fantasy literature should be. In this edition of Fan Service, the provided reading order has more to do with what happened to popular culture and the lore of Middle-earth after the books came out than it does with the stories within. Let’s go.
What Are The Lord of the Rings Books in Order?
From Whimsy To World-Building
The Tolkien Society says that devising an order for Tolkien’s books is “almost impossible to be prescriptive about” — and while that’s true, it doesn’t stop them from trying. As we’ll get into, and in-fiction chronological order wouldn’t be a great way to ease oneself into the world Tolkien created, nor would reading the books in the order he wrote them (which doesn’t even match up with the order they were published in).
Similarly, a full completionist order would only be of real interest to someone who’s already a hardcore Tolkien fan looking to do a re-read or to fill in any gaps in their Middle-earth knowledge. Introducing someone to the books calls for a simplified list.
Here’s what order to read the books in:
- The Hobbit (1937)
- The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
- The Two Towers (1954)
- The Return of the King (1955)
- The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962)
- The Silmarillion (1977)
- The Children of Húrin (2007)
- Any other Middle-earth stories attributed to J.R.R. Tolkien & Christopher Tolkien
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien #2
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Thanks for this great guide.