Shelfology Book Pairing

The Lord of the Rings: Part One

by J.R.R. Tolkien

The opening novel of The Lord of the Rings—the greatest fantasy epic of all time—which continues in The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read The dark, fearsome Ringwraiths are searching for a Hobbit. Frodo Baggins knows that they are seeking him and the Ring he bears—the Ring of Power that will enable evil Sauron to destroy all that is good in Middle-earth. Now it is up to Frodo and his faithful servant, Sam, with a small band of companions, to carry the Ring to the one place it can be destroyed: Mount Doom, in the very center of Sauron’s realm.

by J. Tolkien

I will begin this book by returning to the quotation that I used to open Beren and Lúthien: a letter written by my father in 1964, in which he said that out of my head he wrote The Fall of Gondolin during sick-leave from the army in 1917, and the original version of Beren and Lúthien in the same year.