[William Cloud Hicklin]

Ivriniel, I'm not sure where you're getting these ideas, but it's pretty clear that you haven't read HME, or at least the relevant volumes. Zigur is entirely correct- the notion of the Rings of Power hadn't yet been conceived when The Hobbit was written, or even when the earliest chapters of the Lord of the Rings were written-- Tolkien at first had little idea why Bilbo -> Bingo was setting out at all!

As for Sauron: he first appears (originally under the name Thu) in the Lay of Leithian, written in the late 1920s, but only in the context of Beren and Luthien, the "sub-boss" of the story responsible for Barahir's death and who has to be overcome on the Isle of Werewolves. He is there depicted as a master of phantoms, illusions, deceits and shape-shifting.... but nary a ring in sight.

The Hobbit, to the best estimation of John Rateliff (who has studied the manuscripts more extensively than anyone alive) was written between 1929 and 32, probably 1930-31. The old theory printed in Carpenter that the final chapters weren't written down until 1936 is probably erroneous, but even if it were correct it wouldn't change the fact that Tolkien didn't write Word One of LR until after The Hobbit was in print and selling well enough that Unwins wanted a sequel- specifically, 19 December 1937 (with no Ring or Sauron). The idea of Rings of Power didn't crop up until late February or March 1938, in the course of writing the chapter "Three's Company" ("The Shadow of the Past" had yet to be written or conceived)- where Tolkien, on the page, altered a description of Gandalf's arrival on horseback into the first Black Rider and thus found the drive-spring of his heretofore aimless sequel.

In 1931 there were no Ages after the First; in 1936 'The Lost Road' brought about the first version of the Fall of Numenor where indeed Sauron is the villain, but entirely Ring-less; and in The Hobbit and the beginning drafts of the LR there isn't the faintest suggestion that Bilbo's ring has any connection to him