The Hobbit features Bilbo Baggins’s journey to the Lonely Mountain.
Published in 1937, The Hobbit follows Bilbo Baggins, a comfort-loving hobbit recruited by the wizard Gandalf to join Thorin Oakenshield and a company of dwarves. Their goal is to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and its treasure from the dragon Smaug. The journey takes Bilbo through dangerous lands and introduces readers to important figures and objects later central to Tolkien’s mythology.
During the adventure, Bilbo finds a mysterious ring in the underground tunnels beneath the Misty Mountains. At the time of The Hobbit’s first publication, the ring’s role was not yet presented in exactly the same way as it would be in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien later revised parts of the earlier book to align it with the larger story.
The title can cause confusion because The Hobbit is also known as There and Back Again, its subtitle. That phrase describes Bilbo’s completed journey, but the canonical short title of the novel is The Hobbit.