What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s eldest son, who edited many of his posthumous writings?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s eldest son was Christopher Tolkien, who edited many of his father’s posthumous writings.

Christopher was born on 21 November 1924 and became deeply involved with the development and preservation of Middle-earth materials. He worked from manuscripts, drafts, maps, notes, and variant texts left by his father, arranging them for publication and explaining their relationships.

His major editorial projects included The Silmarillion, published in 1977, and the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth, published from 1983 to 1996. These books made a large amount of Tolkien’s unfinished and changing work available to readers while also showing how extensively the mythology evolved.

Christopher Tolkien was not the author of every passage in these editions. His role was editor, compiler, and commentator. That distinction matters because some posthumous works combine Tolkien’s own texts with editorial organization, connecting notes, and explanations of differences among drafts.