The Lord of the Rings was written in stages between 1937 and 1949 by J. R. R. Tolkien. It began as a sequel to his 1937 children's book The Hobbit but grew into a much larger work. Despite being often called a trilogy, Tolkien intended it as a single-volume work, but it was first published in three volumes between 1954 and 1955 due to its size and publishing considerations.
