The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Series
- The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in 3 volumes
- Genre
- Classic epic fantasy
- Age
- ages 12 and up
About the series
In The Hobbit, the peaceful hobbit Bilbo Baggins is dragged out of his hole by the wizard Gandalf and thirteen dwarves who want to take back their treasure from the dragon Smaug. Along the way, Bilbo finds a ring that makes him invisible.
The Lord of the Rings picks up many years later. The ring turns out to be the One Ring, forged by the Dark Lord Sauron, and Bilbo’s young relative and heir, Frodo, has to carry it on a long journey to destroy it in the fire where it was made. He is joined by friends, men, an elf and a dwarf, and the story grows into a war over all of Middle-earth.
Tolkien created languages, history and maps for his world, and much of the fantasy that came after builds on what he made.
The books in the series
- The Hobbit (1937)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (1954)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (1955)
My thoughts
It’s hard to imagine fantasy without Tolkien, and you can feel that when you read him: the world feels older than the story, as if it existed before the book began.