Lord of the Rings 1 - The Fellowship of The Ring

JRR Tolkien The Lord of the Ring 1 - The Fellowship of the Ring

Table of Contents

Foreward

Prologue

BOOK I

Chapter 1:  A Long-expected Party

Chapter 2:  The Shadow of the Past

Chapter 3:  Three is Company

Chapter 4:  A Short Cut to Mushrooms

Chapter 5:  A Conspiracy Unmasked

Chapter 6:  The Old Forest

Chapter 7:  In the House of Tom Bombadil

Chapter 8:  Fog on the Barrow-Downs

Chapter 9:  At the Sign of

Chapter 10:  Strider

Chapter 11:  A Knife in the Dark

Chapter 12:  Flight to the Ford

BOOK II

Chapter 1:  Many Meetings

Chapter 2:  The Council of Elrond

Chapter 3:  The Ring Goes South

Chapter 4:  A Journey in the Dark

Chapter 5:  The Bridge of Khazad-dum

Chapter 6:  Lothlorien

Chapter 7:  The Mirror of Galadriel

Chapter 8:  Farewell to Lorien

Chapter 9:  The Great River

Chapter 10:  The Breaking of the Fellowship

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Foreward

This tale grew in the telling, until it became a history of the Great War of the Ring and included many glimpses of the yet more ancient history that preceded it. It was begun soon afterThe Hobbit was written and before its publication in 1937; but I did not go on with this sequel, for I wished first to complete and set in order the mythology and legends of the Elder Days, which had then been taking shape for some years. I desired to do this for my own satisfaction, and I had little hope that other people would be interested in this work, especially since it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues.

When those whose advice and opinion I sought correctedlittle hope tono hope, I went back to the sequel, encouraged by requests from readers for more information concerning hobbits and their adventures. But the story was drawn irresistibly towards the older world, and became an account, as it were, of its end and passing away before its beginning and middle had been told. The process had begun in the writing ofThe Hobbit, in which there were already some references to the older matter: Elrond, Gondolin, the High-elves, and the orcs, as well as glimpses that had arisen unbidden of things higher or deeper or darker than its surface: Durin, Moria, Gandalf, the Necromancer, the Ring. The discovery of the significance of these glimpses and of their relation to the ancient histories revealed the Third Age and its culmination in the War of the Ring.

Those who had asked for more information about hobbits eventually got it, but they had to wait a long time; for the composition ofThe Lord of the Rings went on at intervals during the years 1936 to 1949, a period in which I had many duties that I did not neglect, and many other interests as a learner and teacher that often absorbed me. The delay was, of course, also increased by the outbreak of war in 1939, by the end of which year the tale had not yet reached the end of Book One. In spite of the darkness of the next five years I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin's tomb in Moria. There I halted for a long while. It was almost a year later when I went on and so came to Lothlorien and the Great River late in 1941. In the next year I wrote the first drafts of the matter that now stands as Book Three, and the beginnings of chapters I and III of Book Five; and there as the beacons flared in Anorien and Theoden came to Harrowdale I stopped. Foresight had failed and there was no time for thought.

It was during 1944 that, leaving the loose ends and perplexities of a war which it was my task to conduct, or at least to report, 1 forced myself to tackle the journey of Frodo to Mordor. These chapters, eventually to become Book Four, were written and sent out as a serial to my son, Christopher, then in South Africa with the RAF. Nonetheless it took another five years before the tale was brought to its present end; in that time I changed my house, my chair, and my college, and the days though less dark were no less laborious. Then when the 'end' had at last been reached the whole story had to be revised, and indeed largely re-written backwards. And it had to be typed, and re-typed: by me; the cost of professional typing by the ten-fingered was beyond my means.