Christopher Tolkien, the eldest son of the British novelist JRR Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings , died in the night from Wednesday to Thursday in France at the age of 95, after having devoted himself for decades to the literary heritage of his father, announced the Tolkien Foundation and the daily Var Matin .
Born November 21, 1924 in Leeds, United Kingdom, this scholarly scholar had worked after his father's death in 1973 on his manuscripts and published many unpublished writings.
Transmission work
He notably published all the texts after the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings , deciphering the manuscripts left by his father. Among them, the imposing Silmarillion , in 1977, a saga within which the stories of the Lord of the Rings and the Children of Hurin are inscribed.
His work transmitting the work of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien - one of the most famous representatives of Anglo-Saxon "fantasy", fond of Germanic mythology and Viking sagas - has been followed by several generations of readers.
"We have lost a titan"
"Millions of people around the world will be forever grateful to Christopher for bringing us the Silmarillion , The Children of Hurin and The History of Middle-earth, " a series of books he had compiled and edited, said Shaun Gunner, president of the Tolkien Foundation, on his website. “We have lost a titan. "
For Les Enfants de Hurin - a novel that JRR Tolkien had started in 1918 without being able to complete during his lifetime -, Christopher Tolkien spent almost three decades working on his drafts, in order to unite them in a single story. He also drew maps of Middle-earth, accompanying the Lord of the Rings , where Tolkien's sagas take place.
Criticism of the use of his father's work
He had been very critical of the use made of his father's work. "Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of the time", he confided in 2012 to the French daily Le Monde .
The novelist's last surviving son, Christopher Tolkien died at the Dracénie hospital center in Draguignan (Var, south-east) "where he had been admitted after health problems," according to the regional daily Var Matin. He had lived in France since 1975. According to the newspaper, his funeral should take place in the Var.
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