The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel by the British author J. R. R. Tolkien, and one of the most widely read books in human history. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier fantasy book The Hobbit, but soon developed into a much larger story. It was written in stages between 1937 and 1949, with much of it being written during World War II. It was originally published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955, and has since been reprinted numerous times and translated into many languages, perhaps becoming the most popular work in twentieth-century literature.

The action in The Lord of the Rings is set in what the author conceived to be the lands of the real Earth, inhabited by humanity but placed in a fictional time. Tolkien gave this setting a modern English name, Middle-earth, a rendering of the Old English Middangeard. The story concerns peoples such as Hobbits, Elves, Men, Dwarves, Wizards and Goblins (whom Tolkien calls Orcs), and centres on the Ring of Power made by the Dark Lord Sauron. Starting from quiet beginnings in The Shire, the story ranges across Middle-earth and follows the courses of the War of the Ring. The main story is followed by six appendices that provide a wealth of historical and linguistic background material.

Along with Tolkien's other writings, The Lord of the Rings has been subjected to extensive analysis of its literary themes and origins. Although a major work in itself, the story is merely the last movement of a larger mythological cycle, or legendarium, that Tolkien had worked on for many years since 1917. Influences on this earlier work, and on the story of The Lord of the Rings, include philology, mythology and religion, as well as earlier fantasy works and Tolkien's experiences in World War I. The Lord of the Rings in its turn is considered to have had a great impact on modern fantasy, and the impact of Tolkien's works is such that the use of the words "Tolkienian" and "Tolkienesque" have been recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary.

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