Home > Christopher Tolkien

J. R. R. wrote a great deal of material connected to the Middle-earth mythos that was not published in his lifetime; although he had originally intended to publish The Silmarillion along with The Lord of the Rings, and parts of it were in a finished state, he died in 1973 with the project unfinished.

Christopher had long been part of the critical audience for J. R. R.'s fiction, first as a child listening to tales of Bilbo Baggins, and then as a teenager and young adult offering much feedback on The Lord of the Rings during its 15-year gestation. Christopher himself 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. Christopher re-drew the main map in the late 1970s to clarify the lettering and correct some errors and omissions.

Later the son followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a lecturer and tutor in English Language at Oxford University.

After his father's death, Christopher embarked on organizing the masses of his father's notes, some of them written on odd scraps of paper a half-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. Deciphering this was an arduous task, and perhaps only someone with personal experience of J. R. R. and the evolution of his stories could have made any sense of it; even so, Christopher has frequently admitted to having to guess at what was intended.

Nevertheless, working with Guy Gavriel Kay, he was able to publish The Silmarillion in 1977, followed by the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earthThe History of Middle-earth is a 12-volume series of books that collect and analyse material relating to the fiction of J. Tolkien, produced by his son Christopher Tolkien. Some of the content consists of earlier versions of already published works, while between 1983Events January January 1 Beat Raaflaub became Basel Boys Choir's new conductor January 1 the ARPANET officially changes to use the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet. January 1 compulsory wearing of seat belts becomes law in the UK. January 2 The mu and 19961996 was a leap year starting on Monday (see link for calendar), and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty''. Events January January 5 Hamas operative Yahya Ayyash is killed by an Israeli-planted booby-trapped cell phone Jan.