The Fellowship of the Ring turns 50 today!

The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy was published on this day in 1954. It had been 17 years since Tolkien had published The Hobbit, which sold better than Tolkien had expected. In fact, it was a bestseller, which prompted Tolkien to write a sequel.

As an Oxford professor, J.R.R. Tolkien didn't had precious little time during which to write The Lord of the Rings. He was very particular also about the creation of Middle Earth, the world in which the book is set, its geography, history, and mythology. When he finished writing The Lord of the Rings in 1949, it was more than 500,000 words in length, and the paper shortage in post-war England made publishing a novel of this length impossible.

The Fellowship of the Ring was the first of three volumes. Referring to The Lord of the Rings as a trilogy is misleading, however, because Tolkien intended the work as one volume and the story is actually composed of six books.

Tolkien's sequel was received incredibly well. C.S. Lewis wrote of it, "This book is like lightning from a clear sky -- In the history of Romance itself -- a history which stretches back to the Odyssey and beyond -- it makes not a return but an advance or revolution: the conquest of new territory."

The subsequent volumes were published during the following two years, and today more than 30 million copies of Tolkien's masterwork have been sold worldwide!