Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first edition of The Fellowship of the Ring appeared on the 29th of July 1954 in the United Kingdom. J. R. R. Tolkien had originally envisioned his epic as a single volume divided into six sections he called books, along with extensive appendices.
The Fellowship consists of nine walkers: Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck, Pippin Took, Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir son of the Steward of Gondor, Legolas the Elf, and Gimli the Dwarf. These companions were chosen by Elrond to accompany Frodo on his quest to destroy the One Ring.
Of the two books that comprise what became The Fellowship of the Ring, the first was to be called The First Journey or The Ring Sets Out. The name of the second was The Journey of the Nine Companions or The Ring Goes South.
Tom Shippey suggested that the text gives the impression not of a moment of inspiration followed by careful invention, but of a lengthy period of laborious invention searching for some kind of inspiration. He noted that Tolkien indulged in self-plagiarism by repurposing and expanding his own earlier inventions from the poem The Adventures of Tom Bombadil which he wrote in 1934.
The poet W. H. Auden wrote a positive review in The New York Times praising the excitement while the literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote an unflattering review entitled Oo Those Awful Orcs! calling Tolkien's work juvenile trash. Naomi Mitchison also praised the work in The New Statesman and Nation stating above all it is a story magnificently told with every kind of color and movement and greatness.