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) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Fellowship of the Ring | (1954) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Two Towers | (1954) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Return of the King | (1955) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
Publication Order of Middle-Earth Universe Books
| Tolkien's World: Paintings of Middle-Earth | (1992) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Poems From The Hobbit | (1999) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
Publication Order of The History of Middle-Earth Books
| The Book of Lost Tales, Part One | (1983) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two | (1983) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Lays of Beleriand | (1985) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Shaping of Middle-earth | (1986) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Lost Road and Other Writings | (1987) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The War of the Jewels | (1994) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The History of Middle Earth Index | (2002) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Great Tales of Middle-Earth | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
Publication Order of History Of The Lord Of The Rings Collections
| The Return of the Shadow | (1988) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Treason of Isengard | (1989) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The War of the Ring | (1990) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Sauron Defeated | (1992) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
Publication Order of Tales of Middle Earth Books
| The Fall of Gondolin | (2018) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Fall of Númenor: and Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-earth | (2022) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
Publication Order of Later Silmarillion Collections
| Morgoth's Ring: The Legends of Aman | (1993) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun | (1945) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Farmer Giles of Ham | (1949) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Drawings by Tolkien | (1976) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Roverandom | (1998) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Children of Húrin | (2007) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún | (2009) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Story of Kullervo | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Lost Manuscript | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Beren and Lúthien | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
| Smith of Wootton Major | (1967) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Tales from the Perilous Realm | (1949) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Adventures of Tom Bombadil | (1962) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Tree and Leaf | (1964) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Tolkien Reader | (1966) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Poems and Stories | (1971) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Letters from Father Christmas | (1976) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Silmarillion | (1977) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth | (1980) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Peoples of Middle-earth | (1996) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| A Tolkien Miscellany | (2002) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Fall of Arthur | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo | (2021) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Battle of Maldon | (2023) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| A Middle English Reader and Vocabulary | (1921) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Beowulf and the Critics | (1936) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Tolkien on Fairy-stories | (1939) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien | (1981) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode | (1982) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Monsters and the Critics: The Essays of J.R.R. Tolkien | (1983) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| Father Christmas Letters | (1994) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
| The Nature of Middle-Earth | (2021) | Description / Buy at Amazon.com |
Publication Order of Anthologies
Note: The full title of The Hobbit is The Hobbit, or There and Back Again.
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