This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history. Further information will also be found in the selection from the Red Book of Westmarch that has already been published, under the title of The Hobbit. That story was derived from the earlier chapters of the Red Book, composed by Bilbo himself, the first Hobbit to become famous in the world at large, and called by him There and Back Again, since they told of his journey into the East and his return: an adventure which later involved all the Hobbits in the great events of that Age that are here related.
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The first volume in J.R.R.Tolkien's epic adventure The Lord of the Rings.
'The English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and those who are going to read them.'
'An extraordinary book. It deals with a stupendous theme. It leads us through a succession of strange and astonishing episodes, some of them magnificent, in a region where everything is invented, forest, moor, river, wilderness, town, and the races which inhabit them.'
'To have created so enthralling an epic-romance, with its own mythology, with such diversity of scene and character, such imaginative invention and description, and such supernatural meaning underlying the wealth of incident, is a most remarkable feat.'
'Masterpiece ? Oh yes, I've no doubt about that.'
NOTE ON THE TEXT
FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION
PROLOGUE Concerning Hobbits, and other matters
BOOK ONE
I A Long-expected Party
II The Shadow of the Past
III Three is Company
IV A Short Cut to Mushrooms
V A Conspiracy Unmasked
VI The Old Forest
VII In the House of Tom Bombadil
VIII Fog on the Barrow-downs
IX At the Sign of The Prancing Pony
X Strider
XI A Knife in the Dark
XII Flight to the Ford
BOOK TWO
I Many Meetings
II The Council of Elrond
III The Ring Goes South
IV A Journey in the Dark
V The Bridge of Khazad-dun
VI Lothlrrien
VII The Mirror of Galadriel
VIII Farewell to Lrrien
IX The Great River
X The Breaking: of the Fellowship
