# Did Tolkien Know About The Ring?



## Wolfshead (Nov 29, 2002)

Ok, so this has probably been asked before, and I know someone will be able to answer it very quickly, but here goes.

When Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, did he know that the Ring Bilbo found was The One Ring? Or was that added in later, and in The Hobbit it was a just a handy tool that let Mr Baggins appear invisible?


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## tom bombadil (Nov 29, 2002)

It is known to the fans that when Tolkien was writing the Fellowship of the Ring, he had no idea about what to do with that.. ring!  
I believe he had no more intentions for the ring in the Hobbit than to keep Bilbo safe in his journey.
But it is interesting to analyse that fragment that says that Bilbo prefered not to kill the creature, he felt pity and all of that...
Anyway, Tolkien used this fragment in many other parts of the LotR.

Nice to meet you all.
This was my first post in this forum.
I'm from Brazil and hope to find great friends around here.
See ya'!


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## Ithrynluin (Nov 29, 2002)

Maybe there is an answer to this in one of the letters? Possibly the ring's history wasn't fully developed yet,as the Hobbit is sort of a story for children.

Welcome tom bombadil! Isn't there someone here with a very similar name?


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## Confusticated (Nov 30, 2002)

The most thorough answer about what all was known during the writing of _The Hobbit_, and how Tolkien worked off of that story to come up with _The Lord of the Rings_ can be found in HoMe VI:_The Return of the Shadow_.
In fact there was no "One Ring" when he wrote _The Hobbit_.
In The History of Middle-earth VI:_The Return of the Shadow_ ,there are early versions of the first part of The Lord of the Rings along with tons of notes, you might find this extemely interesting if you want to know a lot about how the story took shape and how it went off in the direction that it did.
HoMe VII and VIII deal with the later parts of The Lord of The Rings, but I haven't read them so I couldn't tell you for sure what they are like, I can only assume they are like VI.


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## Arvedui (Nov 30, 2002)

When Tolkien started writing The Lord of the Rings, it was meant to be a second book concerning the Hobbits. 
In one of his Letters, he explaines his thoughts on the Ring being the continuing factor, 
From Letter # 109


> Converting the original Ring into this new and powerful instrument takes some explaining away and Gandalf is hard put to it to find reasons for many of the original Hobbit's actions, but the linking of the books is well done on the whole.... Quite honestly I don't know who is expected to read it ... If grown ups will not feel infra dig to read it many will undoubtedly enjoy themselves ....





> Rayner has, of course, spotted a weakness (inevitable): the linking. I am glad that he thinks that the linking has on the whole been well done. That is the best that could be hoped. I have done the best I could, since I had to have hobbits (whom I love), and must still have a glimpse of Bilbo for old times' sake. But I don't feel worried by the discovery that the ring was more serious than appeared; that is just the way of all easy ways out.


and earlier, how the story developed 'on its own'

From Letter #33:


> I have begun again on the sequel to the 'Hobbit' - The Lord of the Ring. It is now flowing along, and getting quite out of hand.



That's all I could find in a rush, but I'll come back to you if I dig up some more interesting quotes.


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## tom_bombadil (Dec 20, 2002)

I belive it was done intentially but there we go thats just me living in my little world


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## Bjarki (Dec 20, 2002)

Tolkien originally had no idea about what the ring would become - it was just a trinket with a rather useful attribute. In fact, if you read the first edition of "The Hobbit", you will find that the whole "Riddles in the Dark" chapter is completely different with Gollum far less sinister and offering to give Bilbo the ring as a present! Tolkien rewrote this for the second edition to make it consistent with LOTR, but interestingly he inserted the original story into LOTR as the lie that Bilbo told to Gandalf and the dwarves in order to bolster his claim to the ring.

In fact Tolkien continued to tinker with "The Hobbit" into a third edition with little changes such as "cold chicken and tomatoes" in the second becoming "cold chicken and pickles" in the third. But what he really longed to do was rewrite the whole thing, to make it much closer in style to LOTR, remove all those authorial asides and silly jokes (Golfimbul and the invention of golf, for instance!) etc. Strangely perhaps, one of the things he most wanted to do was get rid of the names of the dwarves - Balin, Dwalin, Dori, Nori, Ori etc. He really came to dislike them, because unlike almost all the other names in his mythology they were not invented by him but came from "outside" from a list in the Old Norse "Elder Edda". However, whether he also had a problem with Gandalf (from Gandr+alf = Wand elf = Wizard) which comes from the same list, I don't know.


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