Which of Tolkien’s children edited and published many of his posthumous works?

Christopher Tolkien edited and published many of J.R.R. Tolkien’s posthumous works.

Born in 1924, Christopher was Tolkien’s third child and became deeply familiar with his father’s manuscripts, maps, notes, and unfinished stories. After Tolkien’s death in 1973, Christopher organized this enormous archive and prepared numerous texts for publication.

His most famous editorial project was The Silmarillion, published in 1977. He also edited Unfinished Tales, the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth, and several other works. These books helped readers study the development of Tolkien’s mythology, including changes in names, chronology, geography, and plot.

Christopher was not simply a publisher reprinting finished novels. Much of the material he handled existed in multiple drafts or fragments, so he explained editorial decisions and sometimes assembled coherent narratives from incomplete sources. His work made a large portion of Tolkien’s legendarium accessible while also showing how extensively Tolkien revised his ideas.