J. R. R. Tolkien books in order

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) was an English philologist and author of The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55), the second of which had sold over 150 million copies by 2007.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State, on 3 January 1892. He became Reader in English Language at Leeds in 1920 and professor there in 1924. At Oxford he was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 to 1945, with a fellowship at Pembroke College, and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 to 1959. He died in Bournemouth on 2 September 1973.

George Allen & Unwin published The Hobbit on 21 September 1937. The Lord of the Rings followed from the same firm in three volumes, a split made to reduce the publisher's risk: The Fellowship of the Ring (29 July 1954), The Two Towers (11 November 1954) and The Return of the King (20 October 1955). Houghton Mifflin issued the American editions. The Silmarillion, edited by his son Christopher Tolkien with help from Guy Gavriel Kay, appeared posthumously from Allen & Unwin on 15 September 1977.

For collectors. The first printing of The Hobbit ran to 1,500 copies and had sold out by December 1937. It carried Tolkien's own black and white illustrations, two endpaper maps and a jacket of his design. Wikipedia reports auction prices of about 6,000 to 20,000 pounds for a first printing, and over 60,000 pounds for a signed copy. The 1951 second edition revised the "Riddles in the Dark" chapter to fit The Lord of the Rings, so first edition text and later text differ.