79-528: Bag End is the underground dwelling of the Hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in J. R. R. Tolkien 's fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . From there, both Bilbo and Frodo set out on their adventures, and both return there, for a while. As such, Bag End represents the familiar, safe, comfortable place which is the antithesis of the dangerous places that they visit. It forms one end of
158-464: A "donkey-boy" in a quarry around 1862, at the age of six, leading a donkey-drawn cart full of tools to the smithy to be sharpened. The family moved to the Middlesbrough area when Dufton found work there in the ironstone mines at Eston . In the 1861 Census, the family were living at Kirkleatham . Despite having partially grown up in this area, Joseph Wright never wrote a word on the dialect of
237-462: A Hobbit", and scholars agree that he was in many ways like his Hobbits, enjoying good food, gardening, smoking a pipe, and living in a familiar and comfortable home. Tolkien makes Bag End a place where, in the Tolkien scholar Thomas Honegger 's words, "most readers feel severely tempted to put on their imaginary slippers and settle down to a piece of cake and some tea." Honegger argues that places have
316-491: A Shire hobbit. Bilbo returns to his home in the Shire to find that several of his relatives, believing him to be dead, are trying to claim his home and possessions. The Lord of the Rings begins with Bilbo's "eleventy-first" (111th) birthday, 60 years after the beginning of The Hobbit . The main character of the novel is Frodo Baggins , Bilbo's cousin, who celebrates his 33rd birthday and legally comes of age on
395-557: A comic light and to exaggerate his own ineptitude", just as Morris's companion, the painter Edward Burne-Jones , gently teased his friend by depicting him as very fat in his Iceland cartoons. Burns suggests that these images "make excellent models" for the Bilbo who runs puffing to the Green Dragon inn or "jogs along behind Gandalf and the dwarves" on his quest. Another definite resemblance is the emphasis on home comforts: Morris enjoyed
474-692: A critical role in The Lord of the Rings , and the function of the safe Hobbit-hole is to establish the character of the " hol-bytlan (hole-dwellers), in the first place stationary beings who have a deep-rooted aversion against travelling outside the Shire." For them, Honegger writes, "Travelling abroad belongs to the same class as adventures", quoting Bilbo's remark in The Hobbit : "Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!" Joseph Wright 's 1898–1905 The English Dialect Dictionary has an entry for hobman , one of many possible sources of
553-604: A dining-room, multiple pantries, and wardrobes. Such things could indicate, Brooke writes, that Bag End's owner is "indulgent, overly-luxurious, too comfortable, a tad vain even", though against this, the hanging-space for many hats and coats suggests that welcoming guests is important to him. Brooke quotes Morris's remark that "the working man cannot afford to live in anything that an architect could design; moderate-sized rabbit-warrens [are] for rich middle-class men", stating that with its mention of rabbit warrens , this "aptly suits Bag End". The cartographer Karen Wynn Fonstad created
632-805: A dozen or more, both men and women, to their home for Yorkshire Sunday teas. On these occasions Wright performed his party trick of making his Aberdeen Terrier Jack lick his lips when Wright said the Gothic words for fig tree, smakka bagms . Wright's "star pupil" was Edith Wardale who had gained an early doctorate from the University of Zurich. He allowed her to lecture for the Faculty Board of Medieval and Modern Languages in 1914 several years before other faculties allowed women to teach. He believed that women were entitled to become university students, but believed that they should not be voting members of
711-469: A full professor there. More specifically, he wrote the foreword to Walter E. Haigh's 1928 A new glossary of the dialect of the Huddersfield district , which included these spoken words. In addition, "Baggins", while not a name by etymology, sounds very much like one of a class of English surnames such as Dickens, Jenkins, and Huggins. These names, Shippey notes, are formed from personal names, in
790-502: A hall beside Eyja-fell, and who tells Morris, tapping him on the belly, "... besides, you know you are so fat", just as Beorn pokes Bilbo "most disrespectfully" and compares him to a plump rabbit . Burns notes that Morris was "relatively short, a little rotund, and affectionately called 'Topsy', for his curly mop of hair", all somewhat hobbit-like characteristics. Further, she writes, "Morris in Iceland often chooses to place himself in
869-577: A historical grammar of German. Wright had a strong interest in English dialects . His book A Grammar of the Dialect of Windhill was "the first truly scientific monograph on an English dialect." Wright's greatest achievement is considered to be the editing of the six-volume English Dialect Dictionary , which he published between 1898 and 1905, partly at his own expense. Other funds were contributed by Professor W. W. Skeat , founder and president of
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#1732779506529948-467: A journey outside the Shire, and returned changed. David LaFontaine writes in The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide that Bilbo is a "confirmed bachelor" who is never "linked romantically" with any woman, and who lives alone in the "luxurious, lovely environment", Bag End, "illustrating the hobbit's artistic sensibility". LaFontaine comments that Tolkien admires Bilbo's "unconventional lifestyle ... almost to
1027-507: A pipe, a bath, and "regular, well-cooked meals"; Morris looked as out of place in Iceland as Bilbo did "over the Edge of the Wild"; both are afraid of dark caves; and both grow through their adventures. The Christian writer Joseph Pearce describes The Hobbit as "a pilgrimage of grace , in which its protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, becomes grown up ... in wisdom and virtue". Dorothy Matthews sees
1106-551: A plan of Bag End, showing her vision of its comfortable layout with many cellars and pantries, complete with multiple fireplaces and chimneys, based on the clues given by Tolkien in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . Her plan makes Bag End some 130 feet (40 m) long and up to 50 feet (15 m) wide, cut into the Hill. Honegger writes that Fonstad's work has contributed substantially to giving Middle-earth an "independent existence". The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes that
1185-536: A psychological journey towards wholeness. Bilbo has appeared in numerous radio and film adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , and video games based on them. The protagonist of The Hobbit , Bilbo Baggins, is a hobbit in comfortable middle age. He is hired as a "burglar", despite his initial objections, on the recommendation of the wizard Gandalf and 13 Dwarves led by their king in exile, Thorin Oakenshield . The company of dwarves are on
1264-528: A quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and its treasures from the dragon Smaug . The adventure takes Bilbo and his companions through the wilderness, to the elves haven, Rivendell , across the Misty Mountains where, escaping from goblins , he meets Gollum and acquires a magic ring . His journey continues via a lucky escape from wargs , goblins, and fire, to the house of Beorn
1343-465: A quite different contrast, between Bag End as depicted in Tolkien's drawing The Hall at Bag End , "the homely yet narrowly limited space of a hobbit-hole with the similarly neat and defined landscape of the Shire in the background," with his The Forest of Lothlórien in Spring , which shows "no particular place, but an airy glade in a forest filled with sunlight, evoking a feeling of sheltered openness." If
1422-556: Is "an anomaly in Middle-earth and a failure of tone". Bilbo's distinctly anachronistic period , compared to the characters he meets, can be defined, Shippey notes, by the presence of tobacco , brought to Europe in 1559, and a postal service, introduced in England in 1840 . Like Tolkien himself, Bilbo was "English, middle class ; and roughly Victorian to Edwardian " , something that as Shippey observes, does not belong to
1501-558: Is close to the spoken words bæggin , bægginz in the dialect of Huddersfield, Yorkshire . where it means a substantial meal eaten between main meals, most particularly at teatime in the afternoon ; and Mr Baggins is definitely, Shippey writes, "partial to ... his tea". Tolkien worked in Yorkshire early in his career, at the University of Leeds ; from 1920 he was a reader in the school of English studies, and he rose to become
1580-443: Is selected by the wizard Gandalf to help Thorin and his party of Dwarves reclaim their ancestral home and treasure, which has been seized by the dragon Smaug . Bilbo sets out in The Hobbit timid and comfort-loving and, through his adventures, grows to become a useful and resourceful member of the quest . Bilbo's way of life in the Shire , defined by features like the availability of tobacco and postal service, recalls that of
1659-642: Is the One Ring forged by the Dark Lord Sauron , and sets in motion the quest to destroy it. Frodo and his friends set off on the quest, finding Bilbo, now obviously old, but spry, in Rivendell. When they have destroyed the Ring, they return to the Shire, via Rivendell, where Bilbo looks "very old, but peaceful, and sleepy". Two years later Bilbo accompanies Gandalf, Elrond , Galadriel , and Frodo to
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#17327795065291738-562: The Baggins and other hobbit family trees in Lord of the Rings gives the book, in Fisher's view, a strongly "hobbitish perspective". The tree also, he notes, serves to show Bilbo's and Frodo's connections and familial characteristics, including that Bilbo was both "a Baggins and a Took". Fisher observes that Bilbo is, like Aragorn : a "distillation of the best of two families"; he notes that in
1817-693: The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford . In 1896 Wright married Elizabeth Mary Lea (1863–1958), with whom he co-authored his Old and Middle English Grammars. She also wrote a book, Rustic Speech and Folklore ( Oxford University Press 1913), in which she refers to their walking and cycling journeys in the Yorkshire Dales , as well as various articles and essays. The couple had two children, Willie Boy and Mary, both of whom died in childhood. Wright and his wife were known for their hospitality to their students. They often invited
1896-761: The English Dialect Society , and A. J. Balfour , at the time First Lord of the Treasury , made a grant from the Royal Bounty Fund . The Dictionary remains a definitive work, a snapshot of the dialects of spoken English in England at the end of the 19th century. In the course of his work on the Dictionary he formed a committee to gather Yorkshire material, which gave rise in 1897 to the Yorkshire Dialect Society ,
1975-582: The Green Dragon Inn , and several Hobbit-holes as well as Bag End in a small hill, with garden. Jackson said of the set, "It felt as if you could open the circular green door of Bag End and find Bilbo Baggins inside." Chad Chisholm and colleagues, reviewing Jackson's 2012 film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey for Mallorn , write that Jackson humorously has the "rough and ready" Dwarves "bursting into Bilbo's neat little home and cleaning out his pantry", providing "a sort of constant comic relief to
2054-478: The Rawlinson and Bosworth Chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, Wright wrote a letter of recommendation. After Wright's death, Tolkien was one of the executors of his will. Wright was greatly admired by Virginia Woolf , who wrote of him in her diary: The triumph of learning is that it leaves something done solidly for ever. Everybody knows now about dialect, owing to his dixery. Wright was Woolf's inspiration for
2133-558: The Taylor Institution . From 1891 to 1901 Wright was Deputy Professor and from 1901 to 1925, as Müller's successor, Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford. Wright specialised in the Germanic languages , and wrote a range of introductory grammars for Old English , Middle English , Old High German , Middle High German and Gothic , which were still being revised and reprinted 50 years after his death. He also wrote
2212-509: The University of Heidelberg . He walked to Heidelberg from Antwerp, a distance of more than 250 miles (400 km), to save money. After returning to Yorkshire Wright continued his studies at the Yorkshire College of Science (later the University of Leeds ) while working as a schoolmaster. A former pupil of Wright's recalled: "With a piece of chalk [he would] draw illustrative diagrams at the same time with each hand, and talk while he
2291-474: The word hobbit , which states that "Each elf-man or hobman had his habitation, to which he gave his name". The Tolkien scholar Michael Livingston comments that from this it is easy "to recall the man-like, elf-friend, hole-dwelling hobbit Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, hired by the not-too-dissimilar dwarves to commit thievery". The scholar of literature Johanna Brooke writes in the Journal of Tolkien Research that
2370-544: The 1993 television miniseries Hobitit by Finnish broadcaster Yle , Bilbo is portrayed by Martti Suosalo . In Peter Jackson 's films The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and The Return of the King (2003), Bilbo is played by Ian Holm , who had played Frodo in the BBC radio series 20 years earlier. Throughout the 2003 video game The Hobbit , the players control Bilbo, voiced by Michael Beattie . The game follows
2449-499: The BBC's long-running children's programme Jackanory was The Hobbit , in 1979. Four narrators told the story with Bilbo's part being played by Bernard Cribbins . In the BBC's 1981 radio serialization of The Lord of the Rings , Bilbo is played by John Le Mesurier . In the unlicensed 1985 Soviet version on the Leningrad TV channel, Хоббита ("The Hobbit"), Bilbo was played by Mikhail Danilov [ ru ] . In
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2528-549: The Baggins family, is a philological joke, as Sac[k]-ville can be translated as the French form of the humble "Bag Town", another attempt to reinforce the family's bourgeois status by "Frenchify[ing]" their surname. The historian Joseph Loconte wrote that Tolkien had set up a contrast between Frodo's light and serene Bag End and the corrupted wizard Saruman 's dark and industrially destructive Isengard . Loconte likens this to
2607-638: The Dorset dialect. On 25 June 1904 Wright was elected to the fellowship of the British Academy . He was also the recipient of a number of honorary degrees , largely in recognition for his work on the English Dialect Dictionary. An Honorary DCL from Durham in 1892 was followed by honours from Aberdeen (Hon. LLD , 1902), Leeds (Hon. LLD, 1904), and Dublin (Hon. LittD , 1906). In 1926, after his resignation from
2686-478: The Dwarves outside the door, and eats their ponies. Bilbo and the Dwarves hide inside the passage. Bilbo goes down to Smaug's lair again to steal some more, but the dragon is now only half-asleep. Wearing his magic ring, Bilbo is invisible, but Smaug at once smells him. Bilbo has a riddling conversation with Smaug, and notices that the dragon's armour does indeed have a gap. He escapes the dragon's flames as he runs up
2765-529: The English middle class during the Victorian to Edwardian eras . This is not compatible with the much older world of Dwarves and Elves . Tolkien appears to have based Bilbo on the designer William Morris 's travels in Iceland; Morris liked his home comforts but grew through his adventurous journeying. Bilbo's quest has been interpreted as a pilgrimage of grace , in which he grows in wisdom and virtue, and as
2844-594: The Five Armies (2014). Joseph Wright (linguist) Joseph Wright FBA (31 October 1855 – 27 February 1930) was an English Germanic philologist who rose from humble origins to become Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford . Wright was born in Idle , near Bradford in the former West Riding of Yorkshire, the second son of Dufton Wright, a woollen cloth weaver and quarryman, and his wife Sarah Ann (née Atkinson). He started work as
2923-562: The Grey Havens, there to board ship bound for Tol Eressëa across the sea. In Tolkien's narrative conceit , in which all the writings of Middle-earth are translations from the fictitious volume of the Red Book of Westmarch , Bilbo is the author of The Hobbit , translator of various "works from the elvish ", and the author of the following poems and songs : The philologist and Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey notes that "Baggins"
3002-480: The King . The 1976 Russian translation of The Hobbit was illustrated with drawings by Mikhail Belomlinsky; he based his Bilbo character on the actor Yevgeny Leonov , who he described as "good-natured, plump, with hairy legs". In Ralph Bakshi 's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings , Bilbo was voiced by Norman Bird . Billy Barty was the model for Bilbo in the live-action recordings Bakshi used for rotoscoping . The 3000th story to be broadcast in
3081-672: The Middlesbrough area. On returning to Yorkshire, he later became a bobbin doffer – responsible for removing and replacing full bobbins – in a mill in Sir Titus Salt's model village of Saltaire in Yorkshire. Although Wright learned letters and numbers at the Salt's Factory School, he was unable to read a newspaper until he was 15. He later said of this time: "Reading and writing, for me, were as remote as any of
3160-421: The Rings "Appendix F". One category was the names that meant nothing to the hobbits "in their daily language", like Bilbo and Bungo; a few of these, like Otho and Drogo in the family tree, were "by accident, the same as modern English names". In the 1955–1956 BBC Radio serialization of The Lord of the Rings , Bilbo was played by Felix Felton . In the 1968 BBC Radio serialization of The Hobbit , Bilbo
3239-630: The Rings , Bilbo and Frodo Baggins , lived at Bag End, a luxurious smial or Hobbit-burrow, dug into The Hill on the north side of the town of Hobbiton in the Shire 's Westfarthing. Tolkien made drawings of Bag End and Hobbiton . His watercolour The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the Water shows the exterior and the surrounding countryside. Tolkien made several pencil and ink sketches for these subjects, only gradually settling on Bag End's final location and architecture. Another of Tolkien's drawings, The Hall at Bag-End, Residence of B. Baggins Esquire , depicts
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3318-512: The Rings as the quest progresses, is "a song about the roads that go ever on until they return to at last to the familiar things they have always known." As such, it forms one end of the main story arcs in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , and since the Hobbits return there, it also forms an end point in the story circle in each case. The journalist Matthew Dennison compares Lobelia Sackville-Baggins 's desire to move into Bag End to
3397-409: The Rings film series . The Hobbit begins with "among the most famous first lines in literature": In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. The protagonists of The Hobbit and The Lord of
3476-516: The Shire are anachronistically in the present, the Old Forest, Rivendell, and Lothlórien represent journeys back into the past . Bag End receives strange visitors – Gandalf and the Dwarves, making it seem a "queer place", in the character Ted Sandyman 's words, "and its folk are queerer". Bilbo and Frodo come to be seen as strange also. Bilbo is "very rich and very peculiar", not least because he seems not to grow old, but also because he went on
3555-475: The Shire is a "secluded [and] remote petit bourgeois idyll", then, Honegger suggests, Lothlórien is a "transcendental [or] idealised idyll". Further, the comfortable Hobbit-holes of the Shire stand in contrast to the untamed nature of the Old Forest , the idyllic Rivendell , and even to what had been the "promised land" of the Dwarves, Moria . The same applies, Honegger argues, to time: where Bag End and
3634-455: The army of Dwarves faces off against the armies of Elves and Men. As battle is joined, a host of goblins and wargs arrive to take over the mountain, now that Smaug is dead. The armies of Elves, Men, and Dwarves, with the help of Eagles and Beorn, defeat the goblins and wargs. Thorin is fatally wounded, but has time to make peace with Bilbo. Bilbo accepts only a little of the treasure which was his share, though it still represents great wealth for
3713-548: The chair, Oxford awarded him an honorary DLitt degree. In the same year, German colleagues dedicated Vol. 60 of the journal Englische Studien to him as a Festschrift to mark his 70th birthday in the preceding year. In 1925 Wright became the inaugural recipient of the British Academy 's Biennial Prize for English Literature (now the Sir Israel Gollancz Prize ), awarded for publications on Early English Language and Literature. Wright's papers are in
3792-478: The character of Bilbo Baggins can be inferred from the architecture of Bag End , just as that of Hobbits in general can be deduced from their preference for living in holes. She suggests that Bag End is an Arts and Crafts building, fitting into the ideas of the designer William Morris and others in the period between 1880 and 1920. Features such as Bag End's panelled walls, tiles, and carpet could all, Brooke writes, have been manufactured by Morris & Co. , while
3871-594: The character to the famous gardener. Shippey argues that the Bagginses and the Sackville-Bagginses are "connected opposites", since the opposite of a bourgeois is a burglar , a person who breaks into bourgeois houses, and in The Hobbit Bilbo is asked to become a burglar, to break into the lair of Smaug the dragon. He observes that the name Sackville-Baggins, for the snobbish branch of
3950-582: The contrast in Tolkien's fellow-Inkling C. S. Lewis 's 1950 children's book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe between the delightful but humble home of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, and the icy opulence of the palace of the White Witch . In Loconte's view, both authors "reintroduce[d] into the popular imagination a Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment". Honegger points out
4029-458: The dangers in the dark". "Bag End" was the real name of the Tudor home, dated to 1413, of Tolkien's aunt Jane Neave in the village of Dormston , Worcestershire . The scholar of literature and film Steven Woodward and the architectural historian Kostis Kourelis suggest that Tolkien may have based his Hobbit-holes on Iceland's turf houses, such as those at Keldur . Tolkien stated "I am in fact
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#17327795065294108-515: The diminutive form; and Tolkien uses Huggins as the name of one of the Trolls in The Hobbit . Tolkien's choice of the surname Baggins may be connected to the name of Bilbo's house, Bag End, also the actual name of Tolkien's aunt's farmhouse, which Shippey notes was at the bottom of a lane with no exit. This is called a " cul-de-sac " in England; Shippey describes this as "a silly phrase", a piece of "French-oriented snobbery". Shippey observes that
4187-431: The game The Quest of Erebor , Gandalf is given the (non-Tolkien) lines "So naturally, thinking over the hobbits that I knew, I said to myself, 'I want a dash of the [adventurous] Took ... and I want a good foundation of the stolider sort, a Baggins perhaps.' That pointed at once to Bilbo". The Tolkien critic Tom Shippey notes that Tolkien was very interested in such names, describing Shire names at length in The Lord of
4266-519: The interior, complete with 20th century fittings such as a wall clock and barometer . Another clock is mentioned in chapter 2 of The Hobbit . The barometer is mentioned in Tolkien's drafts of The Hobbit . Peter Jackson had an elaborate Hobbiton film set built on the Alexander sheep farm at Matamata in New Zealand for his The Lord of the Rings film series . It included a water-mill,
4345-564: The lake-men or the wood- elves . Bilbo finds the Arkenstone of Thrain, the most precious heirloom of Thorin's family, but hides it. Thorin calls his relative Dáin to bring an army of Dwarves. Thorin and his dwarves fortify the entrance to the mountain hall, and are besieged by the Wood-elves and Lake-men. Bilbo tries to ransom the Arkenstone to prevent fighting, but Thorin sees his action as betrayal, and banishes Bilbo. Dain arrives, and
4424-653: The late 20th century, and his Gothic Grammar , in particular, remains on university reading lists over a century after its first publication. Wright had a significant personal influence on J. R. R. Tolkien and was one of his tutors at Oxford. Studying the Grammar of the Gothic Language (1910) with Wright seems to have been a turning point in Tolkien's life. Writing to his son Michael in 1963, Tolkien reflected on his time studying with Wright: Years before I had rejected as disgusting cynicism by an old vulgarian
4503-482: The main story arcs in the novels, and since the Hobbits return there, it also forms an end point in the story circle in each case. Tolkien described himself as a Hobbit in all but size. Scholars have noted that Bag End is a vision of Tolkien's ideal home, and effectively an expression of character. Peter Jackson built an elaborate Hobbiton film set including a detailed Bag End in New Zealand for his The Lord of
4582-470: The much older world of elves , dwarves , and wizards . Marjorie Burns , a medievalist , writes that Bilbo's character and adventures match the fantasy writer and designer William Morris 's account of his travels in Iceland in the early 1870s in numerous details. Like Bilbo's, Morris's party set off enjoyably into the wild on ponies . He meets a "boisterous" man called "Biorn the boaster" who lives in
4661-594: The name Bag End is a direct translation of the French cul-de-sac ("bottom of [a] bag"), something that he calls "a silly phrase... a piece of 'French-oriented snobbery', used in England to mean a dead end, a road with only one outlet"; he notes that the French say impasse for the same thing. The journeys of Bilbo and Frodo have been interpreted as just such confined roads, as they both start and end in Bag End. According to Don D. Elgin, Tolkien's A Walking Song , which appears repeatedly in differing forms in The Lord of
4740-594: The passage, and tells the Dwarves about the gap in Smaug's armour. An old thrush hears what he says, and flies off to tell Bard in Lake-town. Smaug realizes that Lake-town must have helped Bilbo, and flies off in a rage to destroy the town. The Dwarves and Bilbo hear that Smaug has been killed in the attack. The Dwarves reclaim the Lonely Mountain, and horrify Bilbo by refusing to share the dragon's treasure with
4819-803: The plot of the book, but adds the elements of platform gameplay and various side-objectives along the main quests. In The Lord of the Rings Online (2007) Bilbo resides in Rivendell, mostly playing riddle games with the Elf Lindir in the Hall of Fire. In Peter Jackson's The Hobbit film series , a prequel to The Lord of the Rings , the young Bilbo is portrayed by Martin Freeman while Ian Holm reprises his role as an older Bilbo in An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Battle of
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#17327795065294898-486: The point of envy." To LaFontaine, Tolkien's account of Bilbo's "queerness" is to be interpreted as a portrait of a homosexual man. The 1969 parody novel Bored of the Rings , written by the National Lampoon founders Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney , mocks Frodo's homecoming from his dangerous quest to Bag End with the words "he walked directly to his cozy fire and slumped in the chair. He began to muse upon
4977-495: The prosperous Hobbit-hole clearly indicates that Bilbo is middle-class. Its position at the top of The Hill "demonstrates a physical and social elevation above other hole-owners", since as Tolkien wrote in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings , "suitable sites for these large and ramifying tunnels...were not everywhere to be found". Brooke notes Tolkien's statement that "only the richest and poorest" in fact were able to continue
5056-444: The same day. Bilbo has kept the magic ring, with no idea of its significance, all that time; it has prolonged his life, leaving him feeling "thin and stretched". At the party, Bilbo tries to leave with the ring, but Gandalf persuades him to leave it behind for Frodo. Bilbo travels to Rivendell and visits the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain before returning to retire at Rivendell and write books. Gandalf discovers that Bilbo's magic ring
5135-400: The sciences." By now a wool-sorter earning a pound a week, after 1870 Wright became increasingly fascinated with languages, and began attending night school to study French, German and Latin, as well as maths and shorthand. At the age of 18, around 1874, he started his own night school, charging his colleagues twopence a week. By 1876 Wright had saved £40 and could afford a term's study at
5214-619: The self, the ring; the escape from the dark underground imprisoning chambers of the wood-elves and Bilbo's symbolic rebirth into the sunlight and the waters of the woodland river; and the dragon guarding the contested treasure, itself "an archetype of the self, of psychic wholeness". Later research has extended Matthews' analysis using alternative psychological frameworks such as Erik Erikson 's theory of development. The Tolkien scholar Jason Fisher notes that Tolkien stated that hobbits were extremely "clannish" and had strong "predilections for genealogy ". Accordingly, Tolkien's decision to include
5293-455: The shapeshifter, through the black forest of Mirkwood , to Lake-town in the middle of Long Lake, and eventually to the Mountain itself. As burglar, Bilbo is sent down the secret passage to the dragon's lair. He steals a golden cup and takes it back to the Dwarves. Smaug awakes and instantly notices the theft and a draught of cold air from the opened passage. He flies out, nearly catches
5372-413: The similarly-named aristocrat Vita Sackville-West 's passionate attachment to her family home, Knole House , which she was unable to inherit. Sackville-West became famous as a novelist and poet, and by the time The Lord of the Rings was published, as The Observer ' s gardening columnist. Dennison notes that Lobelia is a garden flower, and that readers in the 1950s would immediately have linked
5451-444: The socially aspiring Sackville-Bagginses have similarly attempted to "Frenchify" their family name, Sac[k]-ville = "Bag Town", as a mark of their bourgeois status. The journalist Matthew Dennison, writing for St Martin's Press , calls Lobelia Sackville-Baggins "Tolken's unmistakable nod to Vita Sackville-West ", an aristocratic novelist and gardening columnist as passionately attached to her family home, Knole House , which she
5530-400: The story rather as a psychological journey, the anti-heroic Bilbo being willing to face challenges while firmly continuing to love home and discovering himself. Along the way, Matthews sees Jungian archetypes , talismans, and symbols at every turn: the Jungian wise old man Gandalf; the devouring mother of the giant spider, not to mention Gollum's "long grasping fingers"; the Jungian circle of
5609-533: The traditional Hobbit-practice of living in holes: the poor might have, as Tolkien said, "burrows of the most primitive kind... with only one window or none". Bag End is sharply contrasted with such a burrow , its best rooms being provided with "deep-set round windows". Brooke comments that Tolkien has shown this in The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the-Water , where Bag End has several windows while the Hobbit-holes further down (of Bagshot Row) have fewer. Other signifiers of wealth and class include such Victorian era comforts as
5688-428: The university, saying that they were, "less independent in judgement than men and apt to run in a body like sheep". Although his energies were for the most part directed into his work, Wright also enjoyed gardening, and followed Yorkshire cricket and football teams. At the age of seventy-four Wright succumbed to pneumonia and died at his home, "Thackley", 119 Banbury Road, Oxford, on 27 February 1930. His last word
5767-406: The words of warning given me by old Joseph Wright. "What do you take Oxford for, lad?" "A university, a place of learning." "Nay, lad, it's a factory! And what's it making? I'll tell you. It's making fees . Get that in your head, and you'll begin to understand what goes on." Alas! by 1935 I now knew that it was perfectly true. At any rate as a key to dons' behaviour. When in 1925 Tolkien applied for
5846-462: The world's oldest surviving dialect society. Wright had been offered a position at a Canadian university, which would have paid him an annual salary of 500 pounds, a very generous salary at the time, but he opted to stay in Oxford and finish the Dictionary without any financial backing from a sponsor. In the course of editing Dictionary (1898) Wright corresponded regularly with Thomas Hardy about
5925-474: The years of delicious boredom that lay ahead. Perhaps he would take up Scrabble ". Bilbo Baggins Bilbo Baggins ( Westron : Bilba Labingi ) is the title character and protagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien 's 1937 novel The Hobbit , a supporting character in The Lord of the Rings , and the fictional narrator (along with Frodo Baggins ) of many of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings. The Hobbit
6004-771: Was "Dictionary". He was buried in Wolvercote Cemetery , Oxford. In 1932 his widow published The Life of Joseph Wright . Wright's publications have been of lasting influence. His pioneering work on the Windhill dialect inspired "a vigorous local monograph tradition... patterned after it." Writing of the Dialect Dictionary and Dialect Grammar in 2001, Shorrocks remarks that, "Neither of these works - whatever their shortcomings - has been superseded yet". The grammars have remained in print (sometimes in revised editions) and were still in use by students in
6083-762: Was doing it. Wright later returned to Heidelberg, and in 1885 he completed his PhD dissertation, Qualitative and Quantitative Changes of the Indo-Germanic Vowel System in Greek under Hermann Osthoff . In 1888, after his second return from Germany, Wright was offered a post at the University of Oxford by Professor Max Müller , and became a lecturer to the Association for the Higher Education of Women and deputy lecturer in German at
6162-404: Was played by Paul Daneman . The 1969 parody Bored of the Rings by " Harvard Lampoon " (i.e. its co-founders Douglas Kenney and Henry Beard ) modifies the hobbit's name to "Dildo Bugger". In the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit , Bilbo was voiced by Orson Bean . Bean also voiced both the aged Bilbo and Frodo in the same company's 1980 adaptation of The Return of
6241-407: Was unable to inherit, as Lobelia was to Bag End. The opposite of a bourgeois is a burglar who breaks into bourgeois houses, and in The Hobbit Bilbo is asked to become a burglar (of Smaug the dragon's lair), Shippey writes, showing that the Bagginses and the Sackville-Bagginses are "connected opposites". He comments that the name Sackville-Baggins, for the snobbish branch of the Baggins family,
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