In the first edition of _The Lord of the Rings_ the page (in each volume) with the ring verse has "The Lord of the Rings" printed above the verse. So also has the second edition that I have, and the Ballantine edition.
This "The Lord of the Rings" is however absent in the 1968 one-volume paperback and in the 1969 one-volume India paper edition. I do not see that this is mentioned in Hammond & Anderson, though maybe I am missing it in the dense text.
It is present in the 1986 Houghton Mifflin three-volume hardback edition with Anderson's "Note on the text" saying that it was at the time "the most faithful to the author's intent . . . ever to appear in print".
But it is absent again in the 50th anniversary text, both in one-volume and three-volume editions.
Was 1968 when this change first appeared? Do we know anything more about it?