The Fellowship of the Ring

The Fellowship of the Ring, the English author J. R. R. Tolkien's opening volume in The Lord of the Rings, appeared on 29 July 1954, published in the United Kingdom, and The Return of the King and The Two Towers followed it. Its setting is the invented world of Middle-earth. The first edition opens with a foreword, in which Tolkien discusses how the book was written, and a prologue called 'Concerning Hobbits, and other matters'; the main narrative is divided into two books.

Frodo Baggins inherits a gold ring from his uncle and learns, over a long spring, that it is the one object the enemy of the world wants back. Keeping it in the Shire is not safe; carrying it anywhere is worse, because the ring works on whoever holds it. Frodo leaves with three friends and a guide, pursued by riders in black, and reaches the council at Rivendell where the ring's history is finally explained.

Nine companions set out from Rivendell to take it to the only place it can be destroyed: a mountain in the enemy's own country. The journey has a deliberate shape, with comfortable stays alternating with episodes of danger, which critics have noted as a structural feature of the volume. Mountains, mines, a forest and a broken kingdom all lie between the company and its destination.

The volume ends before the quest does, and it is the first of three parts of a single continuous story rather than a self-contained novel. It establishes the Shire, the ring, the company and the journey, and the two later volumes continue from the point at which it stops.