Given these limitations, there are only 3,000 possible complete first edition sets of the trilogy in existence, and with attrition the actual number is even lower, making these sets genuinely scarce in commerce. The Return of the King – 20 October, 1955 in an edition of 7,000. The Two Towers – 11 November, 1954 in an edition of 3,250.
The Fellowship of the Ring – 29 July, 1954 in an edition of 3,000 copies. The three books in The Lord of the Rings trilogy were published in the following order: These novels would not be illustrated, but Tolkien did design the dust jackets and his son Christopher drew the maps. They also came to an arrangement, unusual for that time, in which the author would not receive profits until after the books had paid for themselves. To minimise their financial risk they convinced Tolkien to publish the novel in three instalments, with the understanding that if the first failed they would not publish the remaining books. But the cost of printing was immense, and commercial success, despite the popularity of its predecessor, was uncertain. Rayner Unwin, the little boy who had enthusiastically endorsed The Hobbit, was now a young man working with the family firm, and he wrote to his father that the book was “a work of genius” (Hammond & Anderson p. This novel took much longer to write, with Tolkien composing on and off between 19, and its final length was an astonishing 1,192 pages.
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