Christopher Tolkien

Christopher Tolkien in 1996

Christopher Reuel Tolkien (November 21, 1924 - January 16, 2020) was the son of author J.R.R. Tolkien, and editor of much of his father's posthumously published work. He drew the original maps for his father's The Lord of the Rings (which he signed C. J. R. T. - the J. for John, a baptismal name).

On August 31st, 2017, he resigned as long-time owner and a director of the Tolkien Estate Limited but remained his father's literary executor until his death in early 2020.

Biography

Chistopher Tolkien was born in Leeds, England, the third son of J.R.R. Tolkien. He was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford and then at the Oratory School. In World War II, he served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, after which he read English at Oxford University.

Young Christopher had long been part of the critical audience for his father'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 fifteen-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 1970's to clarify the lettering and correct some errors and omissions. He appointed Stephen Raw to assist in the map presentation for one of the releases of the trilogy.

He followed in his father's footsteps in academia, becoming a lecturer and tutor in English language at New College, Oxford in 1964, until 1975.

His father had written a great deal of material on 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. And so, Christopher then 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 admitted to having to occasionally guess at what his father intended.

Nevertheless, working with Guy Gavriel Kay, he was able to publish The Silmarillion in 1977. This was followed by Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth in 1980, and then the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth between 1983 and 1996, and the three volumes of the Great Tales between 2007 and 2018. He also compiled The Monsters and the Critics and other essays, of his father's significant academic lectures given from the 1930's to the 1960's, in 1983.

A year before his resignation in 2017, Christopher Tolkien was given the Bodley Medal for his extensive labors on his father's writings, by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the home to the majority of J.R.R. Tolkien's manuscripts and effects.

Christopher Tolkien in the 2010s

His second wife, Baillie Tolkien, edited J. R. R. Tolkien's Letters From Father Christmas for posthumous publication.

His eldest son (from his first wife Faith), Simon Tolkien, is a barrister and novelist. His other children include Adam Reuel Tolkien, and Rachel Clare Reuel Tolkien.

Christopher passed away in January 2020 at the age of 96. In his memory, many essays by Tolkien scholars concerning Christopher's work in his father's legendarium were published two years later in The Great Tales Never End, edited by Richard Ovenden, current head of the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.

Audiobooks

Christopher Tolkien has occasionally narrated portions of his father's literature.

• 1977 - J.R.R. Tolkien: The Silmarillion: Of Beren and Lúthien, of the chapter "Of Beren and Lúthien", distributed by New York: Caedmon Records (TC 1564)
• 1978 - J.R.R. Tolkien: Of the Darkening of Valinor, and Of the Flight of the Ñoldor, from The Silmarillion, dist. New York: Caedmon Records (TC 1579)
• 1992 - The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son, read by him and his father, dist. HarperCollins Audiobooks
• 2007: The Children of Húrin Audiobook, Preface and Introduction (story read by Christopher Lee), dist. HarperCollins Audiobooks

Portrayal in film

In the 2019 biographical film Tolkien, a young Christopher Tolkien is portrayed by English actor Jack Riley.

The Tolkien family line

John Suffield 1833–1930

Emily Jane Sparrow

John Benjamin 1807–1896

Mary Jane Stowe

Jane

Mabel 1870-1904

Arthur Reuel 1857-1896

Mabel

Grace

Florence

Wilfred

Laurence

Edith Bratt 1889-1971

J.R.R. Tolkien 1892-1973

Hilary Arthur Reuel 1894-1976

John 1917-2003

Michael 1920-1984

Christopher b.1924-2020

Priscilla b.1929-2022

Gabriel b.1931

Julian b.1935

Paul b.1935

Michael b.1943

*Simon b.1959

Christopher

Tim b.1962

Dominic

Joan b.1945

**Adam b.1969

Angela

Nicolas

Zoe

Judith b.1951

**Rachel b.1971

Stephen

Royd Tolkien

(*Child of Faith=b.1928)
(**Children of Baillie=b.1941)