The First Scientist of Middle-earth

Christopher Tolkien, the youngest son of The Lord of the Rings author, has died. He was his father's chief critic and editor

On January 16, Christopher Tolkien, the youngest son of John R. R. Tolkien, died in Provence at the age of 95. He edited most of the writer’s works after his death (including The Silmarillion) and made a significant contribution to Tolkien studies. Christopher also drew the original maps of Middle-earth that illustrated the first editions of The Lord of the Rings.

Christopher was born in 1924 in Leeds. As a child, he was often ill , with appendicitis and heart problems keeping him at home. This brought him closer to his father, as John R. R. would read him bedtime stories about Bilbo Baggins, which later became the basis for The Hobbit, and they would discuss his drafts together. Christopher began drawing maps of Middle-earth (some of which are now in the National Library of England) and typing up John R. R.’s manuscripts.

In 1943, Christopher joined the Royal Air Force and was sent to serve in South Africa. Even then, his father was mailing him drafts of The Lord of the Rings to proofread and calling him his "chief critic and co-author."

After returning from the army, Christopher entered Trinity College, Oxford University, where he studied English philology. Soon, the elder Tolkien invited him to join the Inklings Club – an informal literary circle at the university that included, in addition to John R. R., writers C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield – and at 21, he became its youngest (and, until recently, last living) member. After completing his studies, Christopher became a teacher of Old and Middle English, as well as Old Norse.

In 1973, John R. R. Tolkien died, and Christopher spent the next 50 years studying his father’s manuscripts. “He worked on his amazing archive as if it had been found in a sealed tomb,” recalls Austin Olney, an editor at Houghton Mifflin who met the younger Tolkien at his home.

Christopher Tolkien edited a number of his father's posthumous works, including The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, and The History of Middle-earth. "As strange as it may sound, I grew up in the world that [John R. R.] created. For me, the cities of The Silmarillion are more realistic than Babylon," Christopher said .

"He opened up the rich and complex Tolkien mythology to us," says Dimitra Fimi, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow and a Tolkien scholar. "He was a cartographer and the first scholar of Middle-earth."

Having spent much of his life studying the thousands of rough notes that JRR left in his illegible handwriting, including on napkins, Christopher was harsh in his criticism of the famous film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, which greatly popularized the world of Middle-earth among a wider audience.

"They gutted the book, making it an action movie for 15-25-year-olds," Tolkien Jr. told Le Monde in 2012. He said "commercialization has reduced to zero all the aesthetic and philosophical meaning" of J.R.R.'s works.

In 2008, Christopher sued New Line Cinema, the film company that released Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. He demanded £133 million for unpaid royalties (in 1968, John R. R. sold the rights to The Lord of the Rings for £10,000 to pay off tax debts, which meant that the writer's family did not receive a percentage of the income from Jackson's films). Later, the plaintiff and the defendant reached an out-of-court settlement (the amount of compensation paid to Tolkien Jr. was not disclosed) - and this allowed New Line Cinema to film The Hobbit.

Because of the Hollywood adaptations, Christopher even had a falling out with his own son Simon, who supported Peter Jackson's project. Considering this a betrayal, Christopher did not allow Simon to join the board of directors of the Tolkien Estate company he later founded and for several years communicated with him only through a lawyer, but later they still managed to make peace .

Stepan Nilov