[Pitchwife]

I'm feeling a little contrary today, so I'd like to stir the pot of this thread once more and argue that the fact that Tolkien didn't, at the time of writing The Hobbit, intend the ring to have an evil influence on Bilbo, though undeniably true, is neither here nor there.

Why? Because the change in role and importance the ring underwent between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, becoming The One Ring, is retroactive within the fictional universe. Once the ring 'turned out' to be the One Ring it always was the One Ring, and the story in the First Edition where Gollum was ready to give Bilbo the ring willingly becomes a figment of Bilbo's desire to make himself look better and affirm his right to the ring.

It's therefore perfectly legit in my opinion to speculate about the Ring influencing Bilbo's taking the Arkenstone, and even more his failure to report his find to the Dwarves - though definitely not the use he made of it, where his better hobbit nature came through. I mean, I totally could see Frodo wondering about that, re-reading Bilbo's book after his return from Mordor. Whatever the Ring's part in the affair, it's influence on Bilbo would still have been very subtle and tenuous at the time, which may be why Tolkien felt no need to elaborate on it in his revisions.

Once again, it's clear and has been amply demonstrated that this isn't what Tolkien intended at the time of writing TH. Whether this is a problem depends on whether you hold auctorial intention to be more important than a text's power to acquire and generate new meanings through its history.