Who edited and published J.R.R. Tolkien’s unfinished novel The Silmarillion after his death?

Christopher Tolkien edited and published J.R.R. Tolkien’s unfinished novel The Silmarillion after his death.

The Silmarillion was published in 1977, four years after Tolkien died. Christopher Tolkien worked from his father’s manuscripts, notes, and different versions of stories to assemble a coherent book. The volume presents the mythology and history of Tolkien’s imagined world, from creation through major events of the First Age and later periods.

Because Tolkien revised many of these materials across decades, Christopher had to make editorial decisions about arrangement, wording, and continuity. The published book is therefore not a single completed manuscript written in one continuous period. It is an editorial construction based on a large body of Tolkien’s surviving work.

Rayner Unwin was an important publisher connected with Tolkien’s books, but he did not edit The Silmarillion. C.S. Lewis was Tolkien’s friend and fellow writer, while Guy Gavriel Kay assisted Christopher on an earlier editorial project but was not the editor named on The Silmarillion.