Which Tolkien child became the literary executor of J.R.R. Tolkien’s unpublished writings?

Christopher Tolkien became the literary executor of J.R.R. Tolkien’s unpublished writings.

Christopher Tolkien was J.R.R. Tolkien’s third child and second son. He worked closely with his father’s manuscripts and illustrations, and he helped prepare Tolkien’s writings for publication after Tolkien died in 1973.

His editorial work produced The Silmarillion, published in 1977, as well as many later volumes. The twelve-volume History of Middle-earth documented drafts, revisions, and notes behind Tolkien’s major mythology and narratives. Christopher’s role was not simply that of a publisher: he compared incomplete texts, organized variants, and supplied editorial framing.

Because many of Tolkien’s stories existed in multiple versions, Christopher sometimes had to make difficult decisions about arrangement and presentation. Readers should distinguish his editorial books from novels completed and published by J.R.R. Tolkien himself. Christopher Tolkien died in 2020, after decades of preserving and explaining his father’s literary papers.