The Lord of the Rings (3 vols)

UK George Allen & Unwin is the true first for all three volumes; the US Houghton Mifflin issues followed, and the earliest of those were made up from sheets printed in Britain. A genuine first-edition set must have all three as first impressions — Fellowship and Two Towers dated 1954 and Return of the King dated 1955 on the verso. Because the volumes were issued a year apart and quickly reprinted, mixed-impression sets are common and are not true first sets; a matched set is limited by the scarcest volume, Fellowship, at only 3,000 copies.