The story detailed his mythical journey in which he was accompanied by wizards and elves in search of rumored treasures. The One Ring that plays a major role in The Fellowship of the Ring was the fruit of Bilbo's struggles in The Hobbit. Although The Hobbit was a large success, his greatest literary accomplishment was not from the prequel but the actual trilogy which he entitled The Lord Of the Rings. The trilogy was hailed as a work of absolute genius by Raynor Unwin, Architect of Middle Earth, in 1974 (112). .
Despite that The Lord of the Rings has been a huge success world wide being translated into six different languages, The Fellowship of the Ring alone selling eight million copies by 1980, (St.James 560) to date spawning a motion picture trilogy, infiltrating the ideals of such cults as the 1960 Hippies and the 1990 Russian Idealist movement,(St. James 560) being hailed as a modern literary classic, it was something that almost didn't occur. British publishers were leery about taking on the project entitled The Lord of the Rings. In comparison to their American counter parts the publishing company was relatively poor and feared losing money in the investment that was an adult follow up to a children's novel, that would be sold to an adult audience, at an adult price.(Grotta 113) The production was originally to be published in a large volume, rather than its actual printing in a three separate installments which included The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Against the feuding authors wishes in 1954 HarperCollins released The Fellowship of the Ring,(Grotta 113) the second chapter in the lives of his extravagantly esteemed inhabitants of the middle-earth.
Many critics waited upon the release of the last volume of the series, which was published in 1955, before allowing publication of their opinions of the novel into mainstream journalism,(Grotta 116) Fellow British writer and author of Through the Looking Glass C.
