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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: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @09:43PM (3 children)
He was a faithful executor of his father's legacy, preserving and publishing sr's other materials carefully and with fidelity.
Rather a sharp contrast to Frank Herbert's son who milked his father's legacy dry and sour.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @04:29AM (2 children)
Thanks to him, the Lord of the Rings is now actually readable. He spent decades fixing the problems that the editors and publishers created in the work and the result is a read that's quite a bit more enjoyable. Years ago, I tried to read one of the editions from before he fixed the most glaring issues and I read the 50th anniversary edition. The 50th anniversary edition is a delight to read. The most glaring issues with the previous editions have been fixed and you can get a real sense of what J.R.R. intended the books to be like. They're divided into 6 volumes rather than the 3 that the set had been previously published as.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @10:14PM (1 child)
You know, of the JRR's work, only the Hobbit was genuinely well written work. LotR was good for the epic saga but the writing itself is ... well. In fact, LotR is one of rare cases where the movie was good bit better than the book.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @11:18PM
In a sense that's true, but a lot of that has to do with the publishers wanting 3 books rather than 6 and insisting upon making various editorial corrections without consulting him as to whether the changes were OK. A great deal of his life after publishing the books was spent fixing the editions and correcting those errors.
If you read a more recent edition of the series, such as that 50th anniversary edition, you'll likely find it to be a much more pleasant experience than the editions most people read. It's split into the originally intended 6 books and is a lot easier to read than previous editions. I always though the LOTR was poorly written and impossible to follow, but that's mostly the earlier editions. The editions revised by Christopher are a much,much better.