The Lord of the Rings
Tolkien conceived of The Lord of the Rings as a multiple volume with six sections he called “books” along with extensive appendices. The original publisher made the decision to split the work into three parts. It was also the publishers decision to place the fifth and sixth books and the appendices into one volume under the title The Return of the King, in reference to Aragorns assumption of the throne of Gondor. Tolkien indicated he would have preferred The War of the Ring as a title, as it gave away less of the story.
Before the decision to publish The Lord of the Rings in three volumes was made, Tolkien had hoped to publish the novel in one volume, or combined with The Silmarillion. At this stage he planned to title the individual books. The proposed title for Book I was The First Journey or The Ring Sets Out. Book II was titled The Journey of the Nine Companions or The Ring Goes South. The titles The Ring Sets Out and The Ring Goes South were used in the Millenium edition.
[edit] Plot summary
The Prologue is meant primarily to help people who have not read The Hobbit understand the events of that book, along with some other information that the author felt is relevant to set the stage for the novel.
[edit] Book I: The Return of the Shadow
The first chapter in the book begins quite lightly, following the tone of The Hobbit. Bilbo is celebrating his 111th (or eleventy-first, as it is called in Hobbiton) birthday on the same day that Frodo Baggins, his heir, is celebrating his 33rd birthday (his coming of age). At the birthday party, Bilbo disappears after his speech, to the surprise of all. Bilbo departs from the Shire, the land of the Hobbits, for what he calls a permanent holiday. He leaves his remaining belongings including his home, Bag End and, after some persuasion by the wizard Gandalf, the Ring he had found on his adventures (with which he used to make himself invisible), to Frodo. Gandalf warns Frodo to keep the Ring secret and safe from others, and leaves on his own business.
Over the next seventeen years Gandalf visits Frodo; staying briefly before going off again. Then one spring night Gandalf arrives to alert Frodo to the darker aspects of the Ring which Bilbo had previously only used to make himself invisible: it is the One Ring of Sauron, the Dark Lord. Sauron forged the Ring himself and used it to subdue and rule Middle-earth. In the War of the Last Alliance, Sauron was defeated by the Elven King Gil-galad and Elendil, High King of Gondor and Arnor, though they themselves perished in the deed. The Ring was cut off from Sauron by Isildur, son of Elendil. Sauron was thus overthrown and he fled, and so, for many years, peace returned to Middle-earth. But the Ring itself was not destroyed: Isildur kept the Ring for himself after cutting it from Sauron. However, Isildur