THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Author:
Tolkien
First Edition:
The Lord of the Rings, 1955
Main illustrator:
Munch
In short:
The plot of Lord of the Rings Trilogy is impossible to summarize, for it has too many chapters and sudden new developements. But do not hesitate and check different web sites which try to describe the plot. Tolkien has created the best known trilogy about the War of the Ring, in which the Third Age of Middle-earth came. The plot is inspired by Nordic legends, particularly that of the Nibelung's Ring. The quest is to own the rings, for one of them can make its owner rule over all worlds.
Selection of edition:
Lord of the Rings, illustrated by David Wyatt, Collins Classics.
Le Seigneur des anneaux, illustrated by Philippe Munch, Gallimard, 1988.
Le Seigneur des anneaux, illustrated by Alan Lee, France Loisirs, 1995.
More about Lord of the Rings:
Tolkein, an English philologist and medieval scholar at Oxford, wrote the trilogy The Lord of the Rings (1954, 1955, 1956) as a sequel to the popular The Hobbit (1937). The Ring trilogy expands on the characters and the cosmology of Middle Earth.
Tolkien spent more than fifty years in writing the trilogy. In 1949, he finished the first rough draft, the he revised the text during some more years and eventually he typed the final version. But his publishers delayed even more its appearance and finally it was published in three volumes, against the writer's will, to sell the book more easily. In 1955 the last volume of The Lord of the Rings is published.
Adaptations:
Une aventure extraordinaire, coreographic show by Claude Brumachon, 1998.
The cinema also offers version sof Tolkien's trilogy. In 1978, Lord of the Rings was released, an animated science-fiction film directed by Ralph Bakshi. A film trilogy is being prepeared now and it is supposed to be released by 2001 (The Fellowship of the Ring), 2002 (The Two Towers) and 2003 (The Return of the King), directed by Peter Jackson, with Elijah Wood.
On the Internet:
Summary of Lord of the Rings.