The Covers of The Lord of the Rings

I don't think it's in the least bit controversial to acknowledge the pivotal historical role Ace Books played in releasing their unauthorized editions of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Briefly, Donald A. Wollheim (who would later go one to found DAW) discovered a loophole in then-current copyright law which enabled Ace to publish a US edition of the three volumes without having to pay royalties to Tolkien. This unauthorized edition was only in print for about a year but it sold enough copies to raise the profile of both Tolkien and fantasy more generally in the United States.

The Ace books featured the artwork above by Jack Gaughan, who'd long done illustrations for Wollheim while he was at Ace. There's no denying that the covers are quite effective. The combination of primary colors plus very simple artwork is powerful, even if one is left wondering exactly what is being depicted. For example, it's clear that The Fellowship of the Ring shows Gandalf, though the identity of his companions is less certain (are they hobbits?). The cover of The Two Towers is much more obvious, portraying a Nazgûl upon the back of a fellbeast. Meanwhile, The Return of the King cover might be symbolic of the conflict between Middle-earth and Sauron, shown as a hooded figure standing over Barad-dûr.

The authorized US editions were published by Ballantine and featured these covers.

Truth be told, these are just as striking as the Ace covers – and just as confounding as to what they exactly depict. Barbara Remington, who died at the start of 2020, painted these covers. Interestingly, she also painted the cover of an edition of E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, a novel Tolkien himself admired and from which he drew inspiration. 

The covers I first saw were those of the 1973 Ballantine edition. My school library had copies of these and I probably read them sometime in 1980. Consequently, these particular covers exercise a powerful hold over my imagination. Unfortunately, I cannot recall the name of the artist. (Update: it's J.R.R. Tolkien himself. I cannot believe I did not remember this. Thanks to everyone who pointed it out to me in the comments)

Another edition for which I have great fondness is the 1981 version featuring artwork by Darrell K. Sweet.

I received these three books, along with a yellow copy of The Hobbit (also with a Sweet illustration), in a boxed set as a Christmas gift from my parents in 1983 or '84. I kept them all on a bookshelf beside my bed and consulted them frequently, particularly Appendices E and F of Return of the King. I was (and am) deeply fascinated by constructed languages, so those sections were like catnip to me and had a powerful influence on my own efforts at creating imaginary languages for my D&D worlds.