The Lord of the Rings

The narrative follows on from The Hobbit, in which the hobbit Bilbo Baggins finds the Ring, which had been in the possession of the creature Gollum. The story begins in the Shire, where Frodo Baggins inherits the Ring from Bilbo, his cousin[lower-alpha 3] and guardian. Neither hobbit is aware of the Ring's nature, but Gandalf the Grey, a wizard and an old friend of Bilbo, suspects it to be the Ring lost by Sauron, the Dark Lord, long ago. Seventeen years later, after Gandalf confirms this is true, he tells Frodo the history of the Ring and counsels him to take it away from the Shire. Frodo sets out, accompanied by his gardener, servant and friend, Samwise "Sam" Gamgee, and two cousins, Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck and Peregrin "Pippin" Took. They are nearly caught by the Nazgûl, but shake off their pursuers by cutting through the Old Forest. There they are aided by Tom Bombadil, a strange and merry fellow who lives with his wife Goldberry in the forest.

The hobbits reach the town of Bree, where they encounter a Ranger named Strider, whom Gandalf had mentioned in a letter. Strider persuades the hobbits to take him on as their guide and protector. Together, they leave Bree after another close escape from the Nazgûl. On the hill of Weathertop, they are again attacked by the Nazgûl, who wound Frodo with a cursed blade. Strider fights them off and leads the hobbits towards the Elven refuge of Rivendell. Frodo falls deathly ill from the wound. The Nazgûl nearly capture him at the Ford of Bruinen, but flood waters summoned by Elrond, master of Rivendell, rise up and overwhelm them.

Frodo recovers in Rivendell under Elrond's care. The Council of Elrond discusses the history of Sauron and the Ring. Strider is revealed to be Aragorn, Isildur's heir. Gandalf reports that the chief wizard Saruman has betrayed them and is now working to become a power in his own right. The Council decides that the Ring must be destroyed, but that can only be done by sending it to the fire of Mount Doom in Mordor, where it was forged. Frodo takes this task upon himself. Elrond, with the advice of Gandalf, chooses companions for him. The Company of the Ring also called the Fellowship of the Ring, are nine in number: Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Gandalf, Gimli the Dwarf, Legolas the Elf, and the Man Boromir, son of Denethor, the Ruling Steward of the land of Gondor.

After a failed attempt to cross the Misty Mountains over the Redhorn Pass, the Company take the perilous path through the Mines of Moria. They learn of the fate of Balin and his colony of Dwarves. After surviving an attack, they are pursued by Orcs and by a Balrog, an ancient fire demon. Gandalf faces the Balrog, and both of them fall into the abyss. The others escape and find refuge in the Elven forest of Lothlórien, where they are counselled by its rulers, Galadriel and Celeborn.

With boats and gifts from Galadriel, the Company travel down the River Anduin to the hill of Amon Hen. There, Boromir tries to take the Ring from Frodo, but Frodo puts it on and disappears. Frodo chooses to go alone to Mordor, but Sam guesses what he intends and goes with him.

Uruk-hai sent by Saruman and other Orcs sent by Sauron kill Boromir and capture Merry and Pippin. Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas debate which pair of hobbits to follow. They decide to pursue the Orcs taking Merry and Pippin to Saruman. In the kingdom of Rohan, the Orcs are slain by a company of Rohirrim. Merry and Pippin escape into Fangorn Forest, where they are befriended by Treebeard, the oldest of the tree-like Ents. Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas track the hobbits to Fangorn. There they unexpectedly meet Gandalf.

Gandalf explains that he slew the Balrog. Darkness took him, but he was sent back to Middle-earth to complete his mission. He is clothed in white and is now Gandalf the White, for he has taken Saruman's place as the chief of the wizards. Gandalf assures his friends that Merry and Pippin are safe. Together they ride to Edoras, capital of Rohan. Gandalf frees Théoden, King of Rohan, from the influence of Saruman's spy Gríma Wormtongue. Théoden musters his fighting strength and rides with his men to the ancient fortress of Helm's Deep, while Gandalf departs to seek help from Treebeard.

Meanwhile, the Ents, roused by Merry and Pippin from their peaceful ways, attack Isengard, Saruman's stronghold, and trap the wizard in the tower of Orthanc. Gandalf convinces Treebeard to send an army of Huorns to Théoden's aid. Gandalf brings an army of Rohirrim to Helm's Deep, and they defeat the Orcs, who flee into the forest of Huorns, never to be seen again. Gandalf offers Saruman a chance to turn away from evil. When Saruman refuses to listen, Gandalf strips him of his rank and most of his powers.

After Saruman crawls back to his prison, Wormtongue drops a sphere to try to kill Gandalf. Pippin picks it up. It is revealed to be a palantír, a seeing-stone that Saruman used to speak with Sauron and through which Saruman was ensnared. Pippin is seen by Sauron. Gandalf rides for Minas Tirith, chief city of Gondor, taking Pippin with him.

Frodo and Sam capture Gollum, who has followed them from Moria. They force him to guide them to Mordor. They find that the Black Gate of Mordor is too well guarded, so instead they travel to a secret way Gollum knows. On the way, they encounter Faramir, who, unlike his brother Boromir, resists the temptation to seize the Ring. Gollum – who is torn between his loyalty to Frodo and his desire for the Ring – betrays Frodo by leading him to the great spider Shelob in the tunnels of Cirith Ungol. Frodo falls to Shelob's sting. But with the help of Galadriel's gifts, Sam fights off the spider. Believing Frodo to be dead, Sam takes the Ring to continue the quest alone. Orcs find Frodo; Sam overhears them and learns that Frodo is still alive.

Sauron sends a great army against Gondor. Gandalf arrives at Minas Tirith to warn Denethor of the attack, while Théoden musters the Rohirrim to ride to Gondor's aid. Minas Tirith is besieged. Denethor is deceived by Sauron and falls into despair. He burns himself alive on a pyre, nearly taking his son Faramir with him. Aragorn, accompanied by Legolas, Gimli and the Rangers of the North, takes the Paths of the Dead to recruit the Dead Men of Dunharrow, who are bound by a curse which denies them rest until they fulfil their ancient forsworn oath to fight for the King of Gondor.

Following Aragorn, the Army of the Dead strikes terror into the Corsairs of Umbar invading southern Gondor. Aragorn defeats the Corsairs and uses their ships to transport the men of southern Gondor up the Anduin, reaching Minas Tirith just in time to turn the tide of battle. Théoden's niece Éowyn, who joined the army in disguise, slays the Lord of the Nazgûl with help from Merry. Together, Gondor and Rohan defeat Sauron's army in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, though at great cost. Théoden is killed, and Éowyn and Merry are wounded.

Meanwhile, Sam rescues Frodo from the tower of Cirith Ungol. They set out across Mordor. Aragorn leads an army of men from Gondor and Rohan to march on the Black Gate to distract Sauron from his true danger. His army is vastly outnumbered by the great might of Sauron. Frodo and Sam reach the edge of the Cracks of Doom, but Frodo cannot resist the Ring any longer. He claims it for himself and puts it on his finger.

Gollum suddenly reappears. He struggles with Frodo and bites off Frodo's finger with the Ring still on it. Celebrating wildly, Gollum loses his footing and falls into the Fire, taking the Ring with him. When the Ring is destroyed, Sauron loses his power forever. All he created collapses, the Nazgûl perish, and his armies are thrown into such disarray that Aragorn's forces emerge victorious.

Aragorn is crowned King of Arnor and Gondor, and weds Arwen, daughter of Elrond. The four hobbits make their way back to the Shire, only to find that it has been taken over by men directed by one "Sharkey" (whom they later discover to be Saruman). The hobbits raise a rebellion and liberate the Shire, though 19 hobbits are killed and 30 wounded. Frodo stops the hobbits from killing the wizard after Saruman attempts to stab Frodo, but Gríma turns on Saruman and kills him in front of Bag End, Frodo's home. He is slain in turn by hobbit archers, and the War of the Ring comes to its true end on Frodo's very doorstep.

Merry and Pippin are celebrated as heroes. Sam marries Rosie Cotton and uses his gifts from Galadriel to help heal the Shire. But Frodo is still wounded in body and spirit, having borne the Ring for so long. A few years later, in the company of Bilbo and Gandalf, Frodo sails from the Grey Havens west over the Sea to the Undying Lands to find peace.

In the appendices, Sam gives his daughter Elanor the Red Book of Westmarch, which contains the story of Bilbo's adventures and the War of the Ring as witnessed by the hobbits. Sam is then said to have crossed west over the Sea himself, the last of the Ring-bearers.

The Lord of the Rings started as a sequel to J. R. R. Tolkien's work The Hobbit, published in 1937.[15] The popularity of The Hobbit had led George Allen & Unwin, the publishers, to request a sequel. Tolkien warned them that he wrote quite slowly, and responded with several stories he had already developed. Having rejected his contemporary drafts for The Silmarillion, putting on hold Roverandom, and accepting Farmer Giles of Ham, Allen & Unwin thought more stories about hobbits would be popular.[16] So at the age of 45, Tolkien began writing the story that would become The Lord of the Rings. The story would not be finished until 12 years later, in 1949, and would not be fully published until 1955, when Tolkien was 63 years old.

Persuaded by his publishers, he started "a new Hobbit" in December 1937.[15] After several false starts, the story of the One Ring emerged. The idea for the first chapter ("A Long-Expected Party") arrived fully formed, although the reasons behind Bilbo's disappearance, the significance of the Ring, and the title The Lord of the Rings did not arrive until the spring of 1938.[15] Originally, he planned to write a story in which Bilbo had used up all his treasure and was looking for another adventure to gain more; however, he remembered the Ring and its powers and thought that would be a better focus for the new work.[15] As the story progressed, he also brought in elements from The Silmarillion mythology.[17]

Writing was slow, because Tolkien had a full-time academic position teaching linguistics (with a focus on languages with linguistic elements he incorporated into his books, such as Old English).[18] "I have spent nearly all the vacation-times of seventeen years examining [...] Writing stories in prose or verse has been stolen, often guiltily, from time already mortgaged..."[19] Tolkien abandoned The Lord of the Rings during most of 1943 and only restarted it in April 1944,[15] as a serial for his son Christopher Tolkien, who was sent chapters as they were written while he was serving in South Africa with the Royal Air Force. Tolkien made another major effort in 1946, and showed the manuscript to his publishers in 1947.[15] The story was effectively finished the next year, but Tolkien did not complete the revision of earlier parts of the work until 1949.[15] The original manuscripts, which total 9,250 pages, now reside in the J. R. R. Tolkien Collection at Marquette University.[20]

Unusually for 20th century novels, the prose narrative is supplemented throughout by over 60 pieces of poetry. These include verse and songs of many genres: for wandering, marching to war, drinking, and having a bath; narrating ancient myths, riddles, prophecies, and magical incantations; of praise and lament (elegy). Some, such as riddles, charms, elegies, and narrating heroic actions are found in Old English poetry.[21] Scholars have stated that the poetry is essential for the fiction to work aesthetically and thematically; it adds information not given in the prose; and it brings out characters and their backgrounds.[22][23] The poetry has been judged to be of high technical skill, which Tolkien carried across into his prose, for instance writing much of Tom Bombadil's speech in metre.[24]

The influence of the Welsh language, which Tolkien had learned, is summarized in his essay English and Welsh: "If I may once more refer to my work. The Lord of the Rings, in evidence: the names of persons and places in this story were mainly composed on patterns deliberately modelled on those of Welsh (closely similar but not identical). This element in the tale has given perhaps more pleasure to more readers than anything else in it."[25]

The Lord of the Rings developed as a personal exploration by Tolkien of his interests in philology, religion (particularly Catholicism[26]), fairy tales, Norse and general Germanic mythology,[27][28] and also Celtic,[29] Slavic,[30][31][32] Persian,[33] Greek,[34] and Finnish mythology.[35] Tolkien acknowledged, and external critics have verified, the influences of George MacDonald and William Morris[36] and the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf.[37] The question of a direct influence of Wagner's The Nibelung's Ring on Tolkien's work is debated by critics.

Mentioned at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, the Ivy Bush[38] is the closest public house to Birmingham Oratory which Tolkien attended while living near Edgbaston Reservoir. Perrott's Folly is nearby.

Tolkien included neither any explicit religion nor cult in his work. Rather the themes, moral philosophy, and cosmology of The Lord of the Rings reflect his Catholic worldview. In one of his letters Tolkien states, "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."[26]

Some locations and characters were inspired by Tolkien's childhood in Birmingham, where he first lived near Sarehole Mill, and later near Edgbaston Reservoir.[39] There are also hints of the Black Country, which is within easy reach of northwest Edgbaston. This shows in such names as "Underhill", and the description of Saruman's industrialization of Isengard and The Shire. It has also been suggested that the Shire and its surroundings were based on the countryside around Stonyhurst College in Lancashire where Tolkien frequently stayed during the 1940s.[40] The work was influenced by the effects of his military service during World War I, to the point that one critic diagnosed Frodo as suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, which was called "shell-shock" at the Battle of the Somme, in which Tolkien served.[41]

In the early 1960s Donald A. Wollheim, science fiction editor of the paperback publisher Ace Books, claimed that The Lord of the Rings was not protected in the United States under American copyright law because Houghton Mifflin, the US hardcover publisher, had neglected to copyright the work in the United States.[60][61] Then, in 1965, Ace Books proceeded to publish an edition, unauthorized by Tolkien and without paying royalties to him. Tolkien took issue with this and quickly notified his fans of this objection.[62] Grass-roots pressure from these fans became so great that Ace Books withdrew their edition and made a nominal payment to Tolkien.[63][64]

Authorized editions followed from Ballantine Books and Houghton Mifflin to tremendous commercial success. Tolkien undertook various textual revisions to produce a version of the book that would be published with his consent and establish an unquestioned US copyright. This text became the Second Edition of The Lord of the Rings, published in 1965.[63] The first Ballantine paperback edition was printed in October that year, and sold a quarter of a million copies within ten months. On 4 September 1966, the novel debuted on New York Times' Paperback Bestsellers list as number three, and was number one by 4 December, a position it held for eight weeks.[65] Houghton Mifflin editions after 1994 consolidate variant revisions by Tolkien, and corrections supervised by Christopher Tolkien, which resulted, after some initial glitches, in a computer-based unified text.[66]

In 2004, for the 50th Anniversary Edition, Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, under supervision from Christopher Tolkien, studied and revised the text to eliminate as many errors and inconsistencies as possible, some of which had been introduced by well-meaning compositors of the first printing in 1954, and never been corrected.[67] The 2005 edition of the book contained further corrections noticed by the editors and submitted by readers. Further corrections were added to the 60th Anniversary Edition in 2014.[68]

Several editions, notably the 50th Anniversary Edition, combine all three books into one volume, with the result that pagination varies widely over the various editions.

From 1988 to 1992 Christopher Tolkien published the surviving drafts of The Lord of The Rings, chronicling and illuminating with commentary the stages of the text's development, in volumes 6–9 of his History of Middle-earth series. The four volumes carry the titles The Return of the Shadow, The Treason of Isengard, The War of the Ring, and Sauron Defeated.

The novel has been translated, with varying degrees of success, into at least 56 languages.[69] Tolkien, an expert in philology, examined many of these translations, and made comments on each that reflect both the translation process and his work. As he was unhappy with some choices made by early translators, such as the Swedish translation by Åke Ohlmarks,[70] Tolkien wrote a "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings" (1967). Because The Lord of the Rings purports to be a translation of the fictitious Red Book of Westmarch, with the English language representing the Westron of the "original", Tolkien suggested that translators attempt to capture the interplay between English and the invented nomenclature of the English work, and gave several examples along with general guidance.

The book has been adapted for radio four times. In 1955 and 1956, the BBC broadcast The Lord of the Rings, a 13-part radio adaptation of the story. In the 1960s radio station WBAI produced a short radio adaptation. A 1979 dramatization of The Lord of the Rings was broadcast in the United States and subsequently issued on tape and CD. In 1981, the BBC broadcast The Lord of the Rings, a new dramatization in 26 half-hour instalments. This dramatization of The Lord of the Rings has subsequently been made available on both tape and CD both by the BBC and other publishers. For this purpose it is generally edited into 13 one-hour episodes.

Filmmakers who attempted to adapt Tolkien's works include William Snyder, Peter Shaffer, John Boorman, Ralph Bakshi, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro. Other filmmakers and producers who were interested in an adaptation included Walt Disney, Al Brodax, Forrest J Ackerman, Samuel Gelfman, Denis O'Dell and Heinz Edelmann.

Following J. R. R. Tolkien's sale of the film rights for The Lord of the Rings to United Artists in 1969, rock band The Beatles considered a corresponding film project. David Lean was approached to direct, and while intrigued, was busy with Ryan's Daughter. The next choice, Stanley Kubrick, had to first familiarize himself with the books, only to then say they were unfilmable due to their immensity.[103][104] Michaelangelo Antonioni was contacted, and Heinz Edelmann even offered doing it in animation, but the project fell apart.[105] British director John Boorman also tried to make an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings for United Artists in 1970. After the script was written, which included many changes to the story and the characters, the production company scrapped the project, thinking it too expensive and too risky.[106]

Two film adaptations of the book have been made. The first was J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1978), by animator Ralph Bakshi, the first part of what was originally intended to be a two-part adaptation of the story; it covers The Fellowship of the Ring and part of The Two Towers. A three-issue comic book version of the movie was also published in Europe (but not printed in English), with illustrations by Luis Bermejo.

The second and more commercially successful adaptation was Peter Jackson's live action The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, produced by New Line Cinema and released in three instalments as The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). All three parts won multiple Academy Awards, including consecutive Best Picture nominations. The final instalment of this trilogy was the second film to break the one-billion-dollar barrier and won a total of 11 Oscars (something only two other films in history, Ben-Hur and Titanic, have accomplished), including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Jackson later reprised his role as director, writer and producer to make a prequel trilogy based on The Hobbit.

The Hunt for Gollum, a fan film based on elements of the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, was released on the internet in May 2009 and has been covered in major media.[107] Born of Hope, written by Paula DiSante, directed by Kate Madison, and released in December 2009, is a fan film based upon the appendices of The Lord of the Rings.[108]

Rankin and Bass used a loophole in the publication of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (which made them public domain in the US) to make animated TV specials based on The Hobbit, released in 1977, and a sequel based on the closing chapters of The Return of the King, which came out in 1980.

In 2017, Amazon acquired the global television rights to The Lord of the Rings for a multi-season television series of new stories set before The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings,[109] based on J.R.R. Tolkien's writings about events of the Second Age of Middle-earth.[110] Amazon said the deal included potential for spin-off series as well.[111][112] It was later revealed that the show will apparently be set in the early second age, during the time of the Forging of the Rings,[113] and will allegedly be a prequel to the live-action films.[114]

It was projected in 2018 to be the most expensive TV show ever produced.[115] Much of it will be produced in New Zealand.[116][117][118][119] The cast includes Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Nazanin Boniadi, Tom Budge, Morfydd Clark (as Galadriel),[120] Ismael Cruz Córdova, Ema Horvath, Markella Kavenagh, Joseph Mawle, Tyroe Muhafidin, Sophia Nomvete, Megan Richards, Dylan Smith, Charlie Vickers, Daniel Weyman,[121] and Maxim Baldry.[122]

In 1990, Recorded Books published an audio version of The Lord of the Rings,[123] with British actor Rob Inglis – who had previously starred in his own one-man stage productions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings – reading. A large-scale musical theatre adaptation, The Lord of the Rings was first staged in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 2006 and opened in London in June 2007.

The enormous popularity of Tolkien's work expanded the demand for fantasy fiction. Largely thanks to The Lord of the Rings, the genre flowered throughout the 1960s, and enjoys popularity to the present day. The opus has spawned many imitators, such as The Sword of Shannara, which Lin Carter called "the single most cold-blooded, complete rip-off of another book that I have ever read".[124] Dungeons & Dragons, which popularized the role-playing game (RPG) genre in the 1970s, features many races found in The Lord of the Rings, most notably halflings (another term for hobbits), elves, dwarves, half-elves, orcs, and dragons. However, Gary Gygax, lead designer of the game, maintained that he was influenced very little by The Lord of the Rings, stating that he included these elements as a marketing move to draw on the popularity the work enjoyed at the time he was developing the game.[125]

Because D&D has gone on to influence many popular role-playing video games, the influence of The Lord of the Rings extends to many of them as well, with titles such as Dragon Quest,[126][127] the Ultima series, EverQuest, the Warcraft series, and the Elder Scrolls series of games[128] as well as video games set in Middle-earth itself.

Research also suggests that some consumers of fantasy games derive their motivation from trying to create an epic fantasy narrative which is influenced by The Lord of the Rings.[129]

In 1965, songwriter Donald Swann, who was best known for his collaboration with Michael Flanders as Flanders & Swann, set six poems from The Lord of the Rings and one from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil ("Errantry") to music. When Swann met with Tolkien to play the songs for his approval, Tolkien suggested for "Namárië" (Galadriel's lament) a setting reminiscent of plain chant, which Swann accepted.[130] The songs were published in 1967 as The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle,[131] and a recording of the songs performed by singer William Elvin with Swann on piano was issued that same year by Caedmon Records as Poems and Songs of Middle Earth.[132]

Rock bands of the 1970s were musically and lyrically inspired by the fantasy embracing counter-culture of the time; British 70s rock band Led Zeppelin recorded several songs that contain explicit references to The Lord of the Rings, such as mentioning Gollum in "Ramble On", the Misty Mountains in "Misty Mountain Hop", and Ringwraiths in "The Battle of Evermore". In 1970, the Swedish musician Bo Hansson released an instrumental concept album based on the book titled Sagan om ringen (translated as "The Saga of the Ring", which was the title of the Swedish translation of The Lord of the Rings at the time).[133] The album was subsequently released internationally as Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings in 1972.[133]

The songs "Rivendell" and "The Necromancer" by the progressive rock band Rush were inspired by Tolkien. Styx also paid homage to Tolkien on their album Pieces of Eight with the song "Lords of the Ring", while Black Sabbath's song, "The Wizard", which appeared on their debut album, was influenced by Tolkien's hero, Gandalf. Progressive rock group Camel paid homage to the text in their lengthy composition "Nimrodel/The Procession/The White Rider", and progressive rock band Barclay James Harvest was inspired by the character Galadriel to write a song by that name, and used "Bombadil", the name of another character, as a pseudonym under which their 1972 single "Breathless"/"When the City Sleeps" was released; there are other references scattered through the BJH oeuvre.

Later, from the 1980s to the present day, many heavy metal acts have been influenced by Tolkien. Blind Guardian has written many songs relating to Middle-earth, including the full concept album Nightfall in Middle Earth. Almost the entire discography of Battlelore are Tolkien-themed. Summoning's music is based upon Tolkien and holds the distinction of the being the only artist to have crafted a song entirely in the Black Speech of Mordor. Gorgoroth, Cirith Ungol and Amon Amarth take their names from an area of Mordor, and Burzum take their name from the Black Speech of Mordor. The Finnish metal band Nightwish and the Norwegian metal band Tristania have also incorporated many Tolkien references into their music. American heavy metal band Megadeth released two songs titled "This Day We Fight!" and "How the Story Ends", which were both inspired by The Lord of the Rings.[134] German folk metal band Eichenschild is named for Thorin Oakenshield, a character in The Hobbit, and naturally has a number of Tolkien-themed songs. They are not to be confused with the '70s folk rock band Thorin Eichenschild.

In 1988, Dutch composer and trombonist Johan de Meij completed his Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings", which encompassed 5 movements, titled "Gandalf", "Lothlórien", "Gollum", "Journey in the Dark", and "Hobbits". In 1989 the symphony was awarded the Sudler Composition Award, awarded biennially for best wind band composition. The Danish Tolkien Ensemble have released a number of albums that feature the complete poems and songs of The Lord of the Rings set to music, with some featuring recitation by Christopher Lee.

Enya wrote an instrumental piece called "Lothlórien" in 1991, and composed two songs for the film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring—"May It Be" (sung in English and Quenya) and "Aníron" (sung in Sindarin).

The 2020 modern classical album "Music for Piano and Strings" by pianist and composer Holger Skepeneit contains two Lord of the Rings-inspired pieces, "Laced with Ithildin" and "Nimrodel's Voice".

"Welcome to Hobbiton" sign in Matamata, New Zealand, where the film trilogy was shot.

The Lord of the Rings has had a profound and wide-ranging impact on popular culture, beginning with its publication in the 1950s, but especially throughout the 1960s and 1970s, during which time young people embraced it as a countercultural saga.[135] "Frodo Lives!" and "Gandalf for President" were two phrases popular amongst United States Tolkien fans during this time.[136]

Parodies like the Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings, the VeggieTales episode "Lord of the Beans", the South Park episode "The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers", the Futurama film Bender's Game, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius episode "Lights! Camera! Danger!", The Big Bang Theory episode "The Precious Fragmentation", and the American Dad! episode "The Return of the Bling" are testimony to the work's continual presence in popular culture.

In 1969, Tolkien sold the merchandising rights to The Lord of The Rings (and The Hobbit) to United Artists under an agreement stipulating a lump sum payment of £10,000[137] plus a 7.5% royalty after costs,[138] payable to Allen & Unwin and the author.[139] In 1976, three years after the author's death, United Artists sold the rights to Saul Zaentz Company, who now trade as Tolkien Enterprises. Since then all "authorized" merchandise has been signed-off by Tolkien Enterprises, although the intellectual property rights of the specific likenesses of characters and other imagery from various adaptations is generally held by the adaptors.[140]

Outside any commercial exploitation from adaptations, from the late 1960s onwards there has been an increasing variety of original licensed merchandise, from posters and calendars created by illustrators such as Pauline Baynes and the Brothers Hildebrandt, to figurines and miniatures to computer, video, tabletop and role-playing games. Recent examples include the Spiel des Jahres award-winning (for "best use of literature in a game") board game The Lord of the Rings by Reiner Knizia and the Golden Joystick award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game, The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar by Turbine, Inc..

The Lord of the Rings has been mentioned in numerous songs including "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" by Leonard Nimoy, Led Zeppelin's "Misty Mountain Hop", "Over the Hills and Far Away", "Ramble On", and "The Battle of Evermore", Genesis' song "Stagnation" (from Trespass, 1970) was about Gollum, Rush included the song "Rivendell" on their second studio album Fly by Night, and Argent included the song "Lothlorien" on the 1971 album Ring of Hands.

Steve Peregrin Took (born Stephen Ross Porter) of British rock band T. Rex took his name from the hobbit Peregrin Took (better known as Pippin). Took later recorded under the pseudonym 'Shagrat the Vagrant', before forming a band called Shagrat in 1970.

On 5 November 2019, the BBC News listed The Lord of the Rings on its list of the 100 most influential novels.[141]