Bilbo Baggins

Born in the Third Age year 2890 to Bungo Baggins and Belladonna Took, Bilbo is a hobbit of the Shire who is drawn from comfortable domestic life into a quest when the wizard Gandalf recruits him to serve as 'burglar' for Thorin Oakenshield's company of Dwarves. The quest leads him through the Misty Mountains (where he encounters Gollum and acquires a magic ring), to the Lonely Mountain to confront Smaug the dragon, and back to the Shire; later in life he retires to Rivendell and ultimately sails from the Grey Havens to the West after the events of The Lord of the Rings. Within Tolkien's narrative framing, Bilbo is also the purported author or translator of material collected in the Red Book of Westmarch.

The supplied sources describe Bilbo primarily by age and social aspect rather than detailed physical features: at the start of The Hobbit he is 'a hobbit in comfortable middle age' and by The Lord of the Rings' opening he is very old (eleventy-one at his birthday party) and later 'very old, but peaceful, and sleepy.' The provided excerpts do not supply an extended physical description beyond these life-stage characterizations and his status as a Hobbit of the Shire.

Bilbo is an able and resourceful Hobbit rather than a supernatural being. He functions as the company's burglar on the quest, demonstrating stealth (sneaking into Smaug's lair and stealing a cup), cunning (his riddling contest with Gollum), observation (noticing Smaug's vulnerable gap), literacy and songwriting (credited in the conceit as author/translator of poems and songs in the Red Book). He possesses a magic ring that renders him invisible and — as described in the sources — prolongs his life and delays outward signs of aging while also producing dependence and psychological effects; after relinquishing the ring he shows rapid aging. These effects are described in the narrative sources as properties of the ring's prolonged possession.