Christopher Tolkien

Early life

Christopher Tolkien was named after his father's friend, Christopher Wiseman (he also sometimes used his confirmation name, "John" as seen on his initials of maps of The Lord of the Rings, "CJRT").

Born in Leeds and raised in Oxford, Christopher went to the Dragon School in Oxford and Oratory School in Caversham, Berkshire. He enjoyed watching stars with a telescope as well as a passion for railways. As early as age four and five, Christopher was concerned with the consistency of The Hobbit.

Christopher proved invaluable in correcting The Hobbit after its publication and was paid twopence a correction.

In 1937 he was with his elder brother Michael at The Oratory School. However, due to a heart ailment he was forced to stay at home and work with a private tutor. After spending a year with heart-specialists, on the turn of 1939, Christopher wanted to go to school.

Young adulthood

In July of 1943 he entered the Royal Air Force and in November of that year he went to South Africa to train as a pilot. His absence did not however slow his contributions to his father's works as his father continually sent him parts of The Lord of the Rings to go over. In 1945 he returned to England and was stationed in Shropshire and later that year he returned to Oxford.

On October 9, 1945 his father informed him that the Inklings wished to consider him a permanent member. The task of reading The Lord of the Rings to the Inklings was passed on to Christopher and it was generally agreed that he was a better reader than his father.

In 1954-55 Christopher was delegated the re-drawing of his father's Lord of the Rings maps for publication.

Adulthood

In 1946 Christopher returned to Trinity College to resume his studies and reading English. For a while his tutor was C.S. Lewis. His thesis was a translation of The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise and he received his B.A. in 1949. Christopher also became a lecturer in Old and Middle English as well as Old Icelandic at Oxford. He worked as an editor on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner's Tale, and the Nun's Priest's Tale. From 1963 to 1975 he was a Fellow of New College, Oxford but resigned when he began to devote his time to his father's literary affairs, and soon afterward moved with his family to southern France.

After his father's death

In J.R.R. Tolkien's last will and testament, Christopher was appointed literary executor and granted "full power to publish, edit, alter, rewrite, or complete any work of [his father's] which may be unpublished at [his] death or to destroy the whole or any part or parts of any such unpublished works". He embarked on the task of organizing the masses of his father's notes for subsequent publication; something he would continue to do for the remainder of his life. 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.

With the help of Guy Gavriel Kay he managed to compile The Silmarillion in only four years. During this time, he also edited his father's translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Sir Orfeo. He also worked on the Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings, which was first published in 1975 as Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings in A Tolkien Compass.

Christopher spent the years after continuing to study his father's works and taking the responsibilities of the Tolkien Estate. He recorded portions of The Silmarillion in 1977 and 1978 which was issued by Caedmon Records, New York. In 1979 he wrote about his father's illustrations and drawings for their publication in Tolkien calendars and Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien. Through 1980 and 1983 Christopher edited Unfinished Tales, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, and The Book of Lost Tales Part One which was the first volume in his twelve volume series of The History of Middle-earth, the last of which was published in 1996. In 1998 he edited a new edition of Tree and Leaf including the poem Mythopoeia. In 2007, he edited The Children of Húrin, the first of the so called Great Tales of Middle-earth. His last publications were the editing of Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary (2014), Beren and Lúthien (2017) and The Fall of Gondolin (2018).

In 2016, Christopher Tolkien was awarded the Bodley Medal, the Bodleian Libraries' highest honour, for his "editorial work on his father's manuscripts" and his "academic career at the University of Oxford".

In August 2017, Christopher Tolkien resigned from his appointment as director of the Tolkien Estate.

He died on 16 January, 2020 in Draguignan, France.

Christopher Tolkien had never during his lifetime sympathized the adaptations at any form of the works of his father. As a result, he never approved the idea of the adaptations of any works of his father that Tolkien Estate hold the copyright at any form, such as The Silmarillion or The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

Christopher's first wife, Faith (1928) took an English degree at Oxford and they had one son, Simon Tolkien. A bust of Tolkien by Faith was exhibited at the Royal Academy: Tolkien paid for its casting in bronze. It is now in the English Library in Oxford.

Christopher's second wife, Baillie (1941) is Canadian, and is the daughter of Winnipeg surgeon Alan Klass, and Helen Klass (née Jacob). She has a BA in English from the University of Manitoba and an MA from Oxford. She worked as J.R.R. Tolkien's secretary and was responsible for the section on poetry in the 1965 index to The Lord of the Rings. She later edited The Father Christmas Letters. She and Christopher have two children, Adam Tolkien and Rachel Tolkien.

He appears briefly in the biographical drama film Tolkien, portrayed by actor Jack Riley.

1. Esta ficha se ha importado inicialmente de TolkienGateway.net el día 24/05/2026.