J.R.R Tolkien | Christopher Tolkien

Christopher John Reuel Tolkien, born on 21st November 1924, is the youngest son of J.R.R Tolkien and is best known as the editor of much of his father's posthumously published work.

He lectured on early English and northern literature at New College, Oxford, becoming a Fellow and Tutor in 1964. As literary executor, he has devoted himself to the publication of his father's unpublished writings.

J.R.R Tolkien's oldest story of Middle-earth The Children of Húrin has been painstakingly edited together by Christopher from his father's many drafts, and this book is the culmination of a tireless thirty-year endeavour by him to bring J.R.R. Tolkien's vast body of unpublished work to a wide audience.

Christopher Tolkien says: "It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of The Children of Húrin as an independent work, between its own covers, with a minimum of editorial presence, and above all in continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions, if this could be done without distortion or invention, despite the unfinished state in which he left some parts of it."

Having drawn the distinctive maps for The Lord of the Rings more than 50 years ago, Christopher has also created a detailed new map for this book.