J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit and the Complete Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King/Boxed Set » (Reissue)

It seems an unlikely formula for success: an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon, and a book that begins with a little man who lives in a hole in the ground. But The Hobbit, followed by The Lord of the Rings, created the modern genre of heroic fantasy and made J.R.R. Tolkien one of the most widely-read authors in the world.

A matched four-volume boxed set containing J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings, complete with maps and cover illustrations from the motion pictures

Gale Research

J. R. R. Tolkien is best known to most readers as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, regarded by Charles Moorman in Tolkien and the Critics as "unique in modern fiction," and by Augustus M. Kolich in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as "the most important fantasy stories of the modern period." From 1914 until his death in 1973, Tolkien drew on his familiarity with Northern and other ancient literatures and his own invented languages to create not just his own story, but his own world: Middle-earth, complete with its own history, myths, legends, epics and heroes.