Concering Bilbo Bagginses...

[Child of the 7th Age]

Birdland--

I can't think of another author who's one back and changed major parts of a story like that."

Neither can I. But I'm no expert here. Maybe someone else has heard of an example like this. What does strike me though, is how "compulsive" Tolkien was about going back to his earlier works, changing his mind about things, and making revisions.

I'm reading the volumes of the History of Middle-earth now, and it seems like one reason he never published the Silmarillion during his life was that he felt he had to make revision after revision. At one point, for example, he was going to edit out the "flat" earth he had created at the beginning of Middle-earth in order to shift to a sphere which would be in accord with scientific theory. I'm glad he didn't do it. (I don't mind the later reshaping of the world in the story itself, but I wouldn't want to start out like that.)