The publisher should be named on the title page as “George Allen & Unwin Ltd”. The best way to identify first editions of The Lord of the Rings is by checking the publication information at the front of each volume. Both of these later editions are also considered collectable, and are less difficult to obtain than first editions. This one-volume edition was the first time that the book appeared as the author had originally intended it. A second edition, extensively corrected and with Tolkien’s new preface explaining the origin of the novel, was published in 1966, and the first one-volume edition (based on the text of the second edition) was published in 1968.
Given these limitations, there are only 3,000 possible complete first edition sets of the trilogy in existence, and with attrition the actual number is even lower, making these sets genuinely scarce in commerce. The Return of the King – 20 October, 1955 in an edition of 7,000.
The Two Towers – 11 November, 1954 in an edition of 3,250. The Fellowship of the Ring – 29 July, 1954 in an edition of 3,000 copies.
The three books in The Lord of the Rings trilogy were published in the following order: These novels would not be illustrated, but Tolkien did design the dust jackets and his son Christopher drew the maps. They also came to an arrangement, unusual for that time, in which the author would not receive profits until after the books had paid for themselves. To minimise their financial risk they convinced Tolkien to publish the novel in three instalments, with the understanding that if the first failed they would not publish the remaining books. But the cost of printing was immense, and commercial success, despite the popularity of its predecessor, was uncertain. Rayner Unwin, the little boy who had enthusiastically endorsed The Hobbit, was now a young man working with the family firm, and he wrote to his father that the book was “a work of genius” (Hammond & Anderson p.
This novel took much longer to write, with Tolkien composing on and off between 19, and its final length was an astonishing 1,192 pages.
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