Order of J.R.R. Tolkien Books

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) was an English author best known for his high fantasy novels including The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and others. Aside from being an author, Tolkien was also a poet, university professor and philologist. Due to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books, he was able to breathe new life into the fantasy (and more specifically, high fantasy) genre. The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit have each been adapted into other mediums several times, but the most famous adaptations are the Peter Jackson film adaptations of each. Evidently, his legacy lives on decades after his passing due to movie adaptations of his work and as a major inspiration to any fantasy novelist.

Tolkien had poems published as far back as 1911, but his first novel was The Hobbit, or There and Back Again and was published in 1937. Below is a list of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels and some of his other published works in order of publication and chronological order:

Publication Order of The Lord of the Rings Books

The Hobbit	(1937)
The Fellowship of the Ring	(1954)
The Two Towers	(1954)
The Return of the King	(1955)

Publication Order of Middle-Earth Universe Books

Tolkien's World: Paintings of Middle-Earth	(1992)
Poems From The Hobbit	(1999)

Publication Order of The History of Middle-Earth Books

The Book of Lost Tales, Part One	(1983)
The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two	(1984)
The Lays of Beleriand	(1985)
The Shaping of Middle-earth	(1986)
The Lost Road and Other Writings	(1987)
The War of the Jewels	(1994)
The History of Middle Earth Index	(2002)
The Great Tales of Middle-Earth	(2018)

Publication Order of History Of The Lord Of The Rings Collections

The Return of the Shadow	(1988)
The Treason of Isengard	(1989)
The War of the Ring	(1990)
Sauron Defeated	(1992)

Publication Order of Later Silmarillion Collections

Morgoth's Ring: The Legends of Aman	(1993)
The War of the Jewels: The Legends of Beleriand	(1994)

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun	(1945)
Farmer Giles of Ham	(1949)
Drawings by Tolkien	(1976)
Roverandom	(1998)
The Children of Húrin	(2007)
The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún	(2009)
The Story of Kullervo	(2015)
The Lost Manuscript	(2016)
Beren and Lúthien	(2017)

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Smith of Wootton Major

(1967)

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Tales from the Perilous Realm	(1949)
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil	(1962)
Tree and Leaf	(1964)
The Tolkien Reader	(1966)
Poems and Stories	(1971)
Letters from Father Christmas	(1976)
The Silmarillion	(1977)
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth	(1980)
The Peoples of Middle-earth	(1996)
A Tolkien Miscellany	(2002)
The Fall of Arthur	(2013)

Publication Order of Picture Books

Bilbo's Last Song	(1974)
Mr Bliss	(1982)
Oliphaunt	(1989)

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

A Middle English Reader and Vocabulary	(1921)
Beowulf and the Critics	(1936)
Tolkien on Fairy-stories	(1939)
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien	(1981)
Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode	(1982)
The Monsters and the Critics: The Essays of J.R.R. Tolkien	(1983)
Father Christmas Letters	(1994)

Publication Order of Anthologies

The Random House Book of Fantasy Stories

(1997)

Note: The full title of The Hobbit is The Hobbit, or There and Back Again.

If You Like J.R.R. Tolkien Books, You’ll Love…

• C.S. Lewis
• J.K. Rowling
• George R.R. Martin