Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 5, 2006

The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier fantasy book The Hobbit and soon developed into a much larger story. It was written in stages between 1937 and 1949, with much of it being written during World War II. It was originally published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955, and has since been reprinted numerous times and translated into at least 38 different languages, becoming one of the most popular works in twentieth-century literature. The action in The Lord of the Rings is set in what the author conceived to be the lands of the real Earth, inhabited by humanity but placed in a fictional past before our history. Tolkien gave this setting a modern English name, Middle-earth, a rendering of the Old English Middangeard. The story concerns peoples such as Hobbits, Elves, Men, Dwarves, Wizards, and Orcs, and centres on the Ring of Power made by the Dark Lord Sauron. Starting from quiet beginnings in The Shire, the story ranges across Middle-earth and follows the courses of the War of the Ring. (more...)

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