Bilbo Baggins

Bilbo Baggins is the hobbit protagonist of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, published in 1937, and later Frodo Baggins's older cousin and guardian in The Lord of the Rings. A comfort-loving, unadventurous hobbit content with his quiet life in the Shire, Bilbo is unexpectedly recruited by the wizard Gandalf and a company of thirteen dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield to help reclaim their ancestral mountain kingdom and its treasure from the dragon Smaug. Over the course of the journey Bilbo proves unexpectedly resourceful, discovering a magic ring that grants invisibility during an encounter with the creature Gollum, and later using both cunning and quiet courage to help the company survive trolls, goblins, giant spiders and the political tensions leading to the Battle of the Five Armies. Bilbo returns home changed by his adventure, and the ring he found, later revealed to be the corrupting One Ring, becomes the object his older self reluctantly passes on to Frodo at the start of The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins helped establish the reluctant, unassuming hobbit hero as a defining archetype of modern fantasy fiction.