Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (21 November 1924 – 16 January 2020) was an English and naturalised French academic editor.[1] The son of author and academic
J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien edited much of his father's
posthumously published work, including The Silmarillion and the 12-volume (plus one volume of indices) series The History of Middle-Earth. Tolkien also drew the original
maps for his father's The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien had long been part of the critical audience for his father's fiction, first as a child listening to tales of
Bilbo Baggins (which were published as The Hobbit), and then as a teenager and young adult offering much feedback on The Lord of the Rings during its 15-year gestation. He had the task of interpreting his father's sometimes self-contradictory
maps of
Middle-earth in order to produce the versions used in the books, and he re-drew the main map in the late 1970s to clarify the lettering and correct some errors and omissions. Tolkien was invited by his father to join the
Inklings when he was 21 years old, making him the youngest member of the informal literary discussion society that included
C. S. Lewis,
Owen Barfield,
Charles Williams,
Warren Lewis,
Lord David Cecil, and
Nevill Coghill.[8]
In 2016, he was given the
Bodley Medal, an award that recognises outstanding contributions to literature, culture, science, and communication.[10]
Editorial work
His father wrote a great deal of material connected to the
Middle-earth legendarium that was not published in his lifetime. J. R. R. Tolkien had originally intended to publish The Silmarillion along with The Lord of the Rings, and parts of it were in a finished state when he died in 1973, but the project was incomplete. Tolkien once referred to his son as his "chief critic and collaborator", and named him his literary executor in his will. The younger Tolkien organised the masses of his father's unpublished writings, some of them written on odd scraps of paper half a century earlier. Much of the material was handwritten; frequently a fair draft was written over a half-erased first draft, and names of characters routinely changed between the beginning and end of the same draft. In the years following, Tolkien worked on the manuscripts and was able to produce an edition of The Silmarillion for publication in 1977 (a very young
Guy Gavriel Kay served as his assistant for part of this time).[11]
The Silmarillion was followed by Unfinished Tales in 1980, and The History of Middle-earth in 12 volumes between 1983 and 1996. Most of the original source-texts have been made public from which The Silmarillion was constructed. In April 2007, Tolkien published The Children of Húrin, whose story his father had brought to a relatively complete stage between 1951 and 1957 before abandoning it. This was one of his father's earliest stories, its first version dating back to 1918; several versions are published in The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle-earth. The Children of Húrin is a synthesis of these and other sources. Beren and Lúthien is an editorial work and was published as a stand-alone book in 2017.[12]
The next year, The Fall of Gondolin was published, also as an editorial work.[13]The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, and The Fall of Gondolin make up the three "Great Tales" of the Elder Days which J. R. R. Tolkien considered to be the biggest stories of the First Age.[14]
Tolkien served as chairman of the
Tolkien Estate, the entity formed to handle the business side of his father's literary legacy, and as a trustee of the Tolkien Charitable Trust. He resigned as director of the estate in 2017.[18]
Reaction to filmed versions
In 2001, Christopher Tolkien expressed doubts over
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy directed by
Peter Jackson, questioning the
viability of a film interpretation that retained the essence of the work, but stressed that this was just his opinion.[19] In a 2012 interview with Le Monde, he criticised the films, saying: "They gutted the book, making an
action film for 15 to 25-year-olds."[20] In 2008, he commenced legal proceedings against
New Line Cinema, which he claimed owed his family £80 million in unpaid royalties.[21] In September 2009, he and New Line reached an undisclosed settlement, and he withdrew his legal objection to The Hobbit films.[22]
Personal life
Christopher Tolkien was married twice. He had two sons and one daughter.
His first marriage in 1951 was to sculptor Faith Lucy Tilly Tolkien (née Faulconbridge) (1928–2017). After their separation in 1964, they divorced in 1967.[23][24] Her work is featured in the National Portrait gallery.[25] Their son is
barrister and novelist
Simon Mario Reuel Tolkien.[23]
Tolkien and
Baillie Tolkien (née Klass) married in 1967. In 1975, they moved to the French countryside where she edited her father-in-law's The Father Christmas Letters for posthumous publication. They had two children, Adam Reuel Tolkien and Rachel Clare Reuel Tolkien.
In the wake of a dispute surrounding the making of
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Christopher is said to have disapproved of the views of his son Simon.[26][27] Christopher felt that The Lord of the Rings was "peculiarly unsuitable for transformation into visual dramatic form", whilst his son became involved as an advisor with the series. They later reconciled, with Simon dedicating one of his novels to his father.[28][29]
Tolkien, Christopher (1953–1957). "The Battle of the Goths and the Huns".
Saga-Book(PDF). Vol. 14. pp. 141–63.
Archived(PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
"Introduction" to G. Turville-Petre, Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (Viking Society for Northern Research, 1956, corrected reprint 1976), pp. xi-xx.
^Diana, Glyer (2007). The Company They Keep. Kent, OH: Kent State UP.
ISBN978-0-87338-890-0.
^Tolkien, Christopher (1960) The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise; translated from the Icelandic with introduction, notes and appendices. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. ASIN: B000V9BAO0