"The Necromancer"

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by mhagain

It could of course still be a case of Tolkien lifting the character of Thû the Necromancer from his other writings and dropping him into the Hobbit, but the point remains: the Necromancer = Sauron was something that was intended even before the Hobbit was completed and the common conception that this was a later idea (one that only arose during the writing of LotR) is in fact quite false.

There are also several references from Letters to support this. The Necromancer originally was not connected with the Ring, though, and some might confuse that with the Sauron/Necromancer identity.