Lord of the Rings chronological order

There are few mythologies more complex and detailed than The Lord of the Rings. Most of us know the titular trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien, but there’s a lot of story that happens before that. And now that Amazon is adapting a chunk of it in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, it’s worth going over.

So if you want to dive into the deep depths of Middle-earth, where should you look? What resources should you dig up? We’ve made a little reading list for you.

The Lord of the Rings books in chronological order

Here are all the most pertinent Lord of the Rings to read if you want the full story, and the order to read them in:

1. The Silmarillion: This is J.R.R. Tolkien’s big origin myth. It traces the creation of Middle-earth from its very beginnings to after the end of The Lord of the Rings, although it’s mostly concerned with the First Age, when the Elves fought the dark Valar Morgoth, Sauron’s boss, over sacred jewels called Silmarils.
2. The Hobbit: We skip forward a looooong time to get to The Hobbit, which takes place in the Third Age of Middle-earth and records Bilbo Baggins’ unlikely journey to the Lonely Mountain and back.
3. The Lord of the Rings: This is the big one, the trilogy that chronicles the War of the Ring. It consists of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and Return of the King.

Those are the major books in the mythology, although there are others you can read if you really want to fill out your Middle-earth knowledge. J.R.R. Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien edited and expanded on three crucial stories told in The Silmarillion and released them as discreet novels: Beren and Lúthien, The Children of Húrin and The Fall of Gondolin. Books like Unfinished Tales and The Book of Lost Tales also detail stories related in The Silmarillion. And if you really want to go deep, Tolkien even wrote a book of poetry called The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, about the strange character the Hobbits meet in The Fellowship of the Ring.

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