How Tolkien built The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien did not set out to create an enormous three-part epic when he sat down to write in December 1937 ^[1]. Following the success of The Hobbit, his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, asked for another story about hobbits ^[1]. Tolkien initially proposed an adventure in which Bilbo Baggins had spent his treasure and ventured out to find more ^[1]. But as he worked, the magic ring from the earlier tale took centre stage, pulling in elements of the wider mythology he had been creating since 1917 ^[1].

What followed was a protracted, twelve-year writing process that produced The Lord of the Rings, a work that would establish the conventions of modern high fantasy and sell more than 150 million copies ^[1].

A slow drafting process

Tolkien began drafting what he described as “a new Hobbit” in late 1937, though the pivotal role of the One Ring and the title of the work did not emerge until the spring of 1938 ^[1]. Progress was halting ^[1]. Tolkien was not a full-time author; he worked as an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon and later of English language and literature, grading exams on the side to supplement his family’s income ^[1][2].

The drafting paused almost completely during 1943 ^[1]. Tolkien restarted the manuscript in April 1944, mailing completed chapters to his son Christopher, who was serving in South Africa with the Royal Air Force ^[1]. Another intensive drafting push followed in 1946, and he presented the manuscript to Allen & Unwin in 1947 ^[1]. Tolkien finished the narrative the following year and spent 1949 revising the earlier chapters ^[1]. By the end, the handwritten and typed manuscripts extended to 9,250 pages, which are now preserved at Marquette University ^[1].

Influences from language to the trenches

Rather than drawing purely on contemporary adventure writing, Tolkien rooted the work in academic scholarship and personal history ^[1]. As a philologist specialising in Old English, he was influenced by the epic poem Beowulf, Norse sagas such as the Völsunga saga, and the Finnish epic The Kalevala ^[1]. He built the story around imagined languages and used detailed maps to track geographic movements and timelines ^[1].

Real landscapes and modern horrors also left their mark ^[1]. Tolkien drew on memories of the Worcestershire countryside surrounding Sarehole Mill, alongside his reflections on its rapid urbanisation ^[1]. His wartime service in the Lancashire Fusiliers on the Western Front in 1916—where he endured the Battle of the Somme before contracting trench fever—informed the grim atmosphere of war and the desolation found in his fiction ^[1][2]. He later recorded that his time in the ranks gave him deep sympathy for the plain agricultural soldiers of Britain ^[2].

Publishing in three parts

Although readers usually think of The Lord of the Rings as a trilogy, Tolkien planned it as a single work meant to be paired with The Silmarillion ^[1]. His publishers rejected that arrangement ^[1]. Owing to post-war paper shortages and the financial risk of printing a massive tome, Allen & Unwin chose to issue the novel in three separate volumes across 1954 and 1955: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King ^[1].

Inside the covers, the work was structured into six books, concluding with extensive appendices covering genealogies, chronologies, and invented alphabets ^[1]. A single-volume boxed set appeared in 1957, followed in 1968 by the single-volume paperback that reflected Tolkien’s original preference ^[1].

Legacy in modern fantasy

While fantasy literature existed long before Tolkien, the eventual popular explosion of The Lord of the Rings altered the publishing landscape ^[2]. Initially greeted with mixed reviews from mainstream literary critics, it became a publishing phenomenon, translated into dozens of languages and named Britain’s best-loved novel in the BBC’s 2003 “Big Read” survey ^[1]. Its vast world-building, high-stakes moral conflict, and integration of mythic poetry set the standard for high fantasy storytelling that followed ^[1][2].