Gandalf
A wizard who sends Bilbo on his adventure in The Hobbit and later guides the fight against Sauron. Grumpy, kind and far more powerful than he usually lets on.
Appears In
The Lord of the Rings
View SeriesThe Lord of the Rings follows Frodo Baggins, a hobbit from the quiet Shire, who inherits a magic ring that turns out to be the One Ring of the Dark Lord Sauron. The only way to stop Sauron is to destroy it in the fire where it was made, deep in his own land of Mordor, and Frodo sets out to do it with a small fellowship of hobbits, men, an elf, a dwarf and the wizard Gandalf. Tolkien wrote it as one long novel, and it was split into three volumes by his publisher, so read The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King straight through. The Hobbit comes first. It is a shorter, lighter adventure written for children, and it tells how Bilbo Baggins found the Ring in the first place. This is the book most modern fantasy grew out of, and it rewards patience: the opening chapters in the Shire are slow, but the world widens with every stage of the journey. Readers who want more of Middle-earth's history can go on to The Silmarillion afterwards.
