Moving to out-of-story evidence, Christopher Tolkien's History of The Lord of the Rings discusses the early drafts of the Gandalf's account of the origins of the Ring and of Gollum (what would become parts of chapter 1 and chapter 2 of book 1). In particular, the original Gollum was not corrupted by the Ring - since the original ring was just a bauble that made the wearer invisible. Yet these characteristics could easily apply to all manner of fantastic creatures. There's a theory that these details foreshadow Gollum's being a hobbit: his living in a hole, his familiarity with the same kind of riddles as Bilbo. None of this is conclusive one way or another. Gollum remembered thieving from nests long ago, and sitting under the river bank teaching his grandmother, teaching his grandmother to suck-"Eggses!" he hissed. Gollum brought up memories of ages and ages and ages before, when he lived with his grandmother in a hole in a bank by a river (…) Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with other funny creatures sitting in their holes in the long, long ago, before the goblins came, and he was cut off from his friends far under under the mountains. The revisions of the Gollum chapter change his motivations, but not his physical appearance nor his backstory. He was Gollum - as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face. I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was. In The Hobbit (the final edition, revised to better fit the unplanned sequel The Lord of the Rings), Gollum is introduced thus:ĭeep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. Tolkien decided that Gollum was a hobbit at some point early on during the writing of The Lord of the Rings. Gollum was probably not initially a hobbit, and is never explicitly described as such in any edition of The Hobbit.
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