7-19-12

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring (books by this author) was first published on this date in 1954. It was the first volume of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it was the sequel to The Hobbit (1937). Hobbits are small, humanlike creatures with hairy feet and large — though simple — appetites, who generally like to stay close to home. Tolkien once wrote: "I am in fact a hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands. I smoke a pipe [and] like good, plain food." The Hobbit is a story of one Bilbo Baggins who goes on an adventure through Middle Earth and comes home with a magic ring. Tolkien had written it for his own amusement and didn't expect it to sell well, but it did, and Tolkien's publisher asked for a sequel.

He spent the next 17 years working on The Lord of the Rings. He was well into his first draft by the time World War II broke out in 1939. He hadn't set out to write an allegory, but once the war began, he started to draw parallels between the war and the events in his novel. He made elaborate charts to keep track of the events of the story.

Finally, in the fall of 1949, he finished. He typed the final copy himself, a typewriter on his lap, tapping it out with two fingers. It turned out to be more than a half million words long, and the publisher agreed to bring it out in three volumes. The first came out on this day in 1954. Today more than 30 million copies have been sold around the world.