Christopher Tolkien

Christopher Tolkien
Tolkien in 2019
Born	Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (1924-11-21)21 November 1924 Leeds, England
Died	16 January 2020(2020-01-16) (aged 95) Draguignan, France
Occupation	Editor illustrator academic
Alma mater	Trinity College, Oxford (BA, BLitt)
Genre	Fantasy
Notable awards	Bodley Medal (2016)
Spouse	Faith Faulconbridge ​ ​ (m. 1951; div. 1967)​ Baillie Klass ​ (m. 1967)​
Parents	J. R. R. Tolkien (father) Edith Tolkien (mother)
Relatives	Hilary Tolkien (uncle) John Tolkien (brother) Priscilla Tolkien (sister)

Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (21 November 1924 – 16 January 2020) was an English and naturalised French academic editor. The son of the author and academic J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher edited 24 volumes of his father's posthumously published work, including The Silmarillion and the 12-volume series The History of Middle-Earth, a task that took 45 years. He also drew the original maps for his father's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings.

Outside his father's unfinished works, Christopher edited three tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (with Nevill Coghill) and his father's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien scholars have remarked that he used his skill as a philologist, demonstrated in his editing of those medieval works, to research, collate, edit, and comment on his father's Middle-earth writings exactly as if they were real-world legends. The effect is both to frame his father's works and to insert himself as a narrator. They have further noted that his additions to The Silmarillion, such as to fill in gaps, and his composition of the text in his own literary style, place him as an author as well as an editor of that book.