Who edited and helped prepare J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion for publication after his death?

Christopher Tolkien edited and helped prepare J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion for publication after his death.

Christopher Tolkien, Tolkien’s third son, worked through a large body of unfinished and variant manuscripts to assemble a publishable account of the history of Tolkien’s imagined world. The book was published in 1977, four years after Tolkien’s death.

The Silmarillion presents creation stories, the history of Valinor and Middle-earth, and major events that precede The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It is not a conventional novel, but a collection of interconnected mythic histories, legends, and annals.

Christopher’s editorial role is sometimes confused with authorship in the ordinary sense. The underlying stories and texts were J.R.R. Tolkien’s, while Christopher selected, arranged, edited, and explained material from the papers left by his father.