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News from the BBC
Christopher Tolkien, who edited and published the posthumous works of his father, Lord of the Rings writer JRR Tolkien, has died aged 95.
The news was confirmed by the Tolkien Society, which described him as "Middle-earth's first scholar".
After his father's death in 1973, Mr Tolkien published the acclaimed work The Silmarillion.
Scholar Dr Dimitra Fimi said the study of JRR Tolkien "would never be what it is today" without his input.
My first introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien's work was The Father Christmas Letters, which were written for Christopher and his siblings. In more recent years, I've dipped into Christopher's work on Middle Earth, both his History of Middle Earth, and the various pieces of his father's work that he edited and expanded upon.
What memories do Soylentils have of the Tolkiens' work?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Friday January 17 2020, @11:07PM (1 child)
I've read it, twice at least, maybe 3 times. It's not really a book. It's a collection; and in some respects reads like the bible, in other respects it reads like the Iliad. Or put another way, the language, ever a character in its own right in a Tolkien work is deliberately even more archaic here; because this is this world's oldest stories; and that age comes through. And this is this worlds old mythology and so its constructed like a mythology and it reads like one. The result is a difficult read but a literary feat. That's perhaps why it is both so satisfying and so difficult at the same time. The complete experience of it lends it a remarkable authenticity that you just don't see in anything else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:01AM
Silmarillion is not a polished work. It's the background for Lord of Ring saga. Tolkien wanted to publish that work along with the Lord of the Ring, but the publishers wouldn't have it.
It was the background tale constantly revised as he published the Lord of the Ring trilogy. and Christopher gathered, compiled, edited, and published, so the readers can appreciate the world Tolkien wanted to portray,