Gollum down to the lake. At his wits' end in the dark, Bilbo agreed to a riddle game with Gollum on the chance of being shown the way out of the mountains. In the first edition of "The Hobbit", Gollum's size is not stated. Only in the revised version is it specified that he is small and is actually an unnaturally long-lived Hobbit. Originally he was also characterized as being less bound to the Ring than in later versions; he offered to give the Ring to Bilbo if he lost the riddle game, and he showed Bilbo the way out of
The Fellowship of the Ring the decision to publish "The Lord of the Rings" in three volumes was made, Tolkien had hoped to publish the novel in one volume, possibly also combined with "The Silmarillion". However, he had proposed titles for the individual six sections. Of the two books that comprise what became "The Fellowship of the Ring" the first was to be called "The First Journey" or "The Ring Sets Out". The name of the second was "The Journey of the Nine Companions" or "The Ring Goes South". The titles "The Ring Sets Out" and "The Ring Goes South" were used in the "Millennium