The Hobbit
by J.R.R. Tolkien
read: circa 2001
Guardian 1000 Novels
Bilbo's acquisition of The One Ring in The Hobbit doesn't seem especially significant - it's just a cool ring that turns him invisible. It wasn't surprising when Tolkien Professor Corey Olsen explained that Tolkien didn't initially conceive of the ring as a dark artifact of Sauron, and in fact that he re-wrote The Hobbit a bit to make it more menacing in subsequent editions.
Professor Olsen spent a lot of time talking about luck, coincidence, and deus ex machina devices in The Hobbit. In light of Tolkien's strong religious believes and the framework he's set up in The Silmarillion, these apparent lapses make more sense - there is literally a "deus" in Iluvatar pulling the strings.
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