JRRT or CT?

[MatthewM]

In Unfinished Tales, I'm having a tough time recognizing if it is Tolkien writing or CT commentating. How does one tell? Sometimes you can tell it's CT because he states "My father wrote..." but sometimes it's as elusive as you could get. For example, is it JRRT that wrote the Appendix's in "History of Galadriel and Celeborn"?

[Boromir88]

I don't know what edition you have. But the one I have has Christopher's comments and then indents everything that was written by Tolkien.

In his will Tolkien names his son 'literary executor' over all of his unpublished works. Chris could edit, add, burn, whatever he felt like doing with his fathers unpublished works. And as he remarks in his Introduction to Unfinished Tales, that he wanted to bring forward his father's unpublished works to the public for those who were interested in reading more of what his father wrote about Middle-earth. Just as he was. Also several times Tolkien names CT as a helpful collaborator/critic to him:

A map of the Gondor area is perhaps the most urgent. I am hoping to get my son Christopher to produce one from my drafts, as soon as possible.~Letter 150

'This book {LOTR} has become to be more and more addressed to you, so that your opinion matters more than any one else's.'~Letter 78 (Dated Aug. 12, 1944 to Christopher)

And eventhough if Chris was a helpful collaborator to his father, and also was handed over the powers of literary executor, to do what he wanted with any of his father's works that were unpublished. I guess to answer in a round about way, Chris remarks that he never wrote anything himself, he comments on it, but didn't want to add anything himself (though he very well could of).

I don't know if that's a big help to you...I hope so. The edition I have makes it rather easy as anything indented is from Tolkien, anything not is commentary from CT . (and the Notes at the end of each chapter are also comments from CT).

[Mithalwen]

Basically it is as Boro says ..if it is story narrative it is JRRT and if it is commentary it is CT. I am looking at a fairly standard UK edition and the indents and slightly smaller typeface are not particularly clear other than when CT quote his father's text during his own commentary


The notations are CT's but he does often quote his father or describe drafts not used. He describes rather than transcribes a lot of the later stuff in The History of C&G and "retells" it. This I take to be rendering a semi illegible text coherent rather than adding anything other than the bracketed notes and references. After the Silmarillion which presumably had to be presented as a coherent text to be published (I wonder if anyone at the time realised there would be such a demand for the drafts and semi developed scraps ?), Christopher is definitely editor not ghostwriter and the distinctions between pere & fils are usually pretty clear. Far be it from me to criticise HoME but he is so scrupulous about keeping it to the stuff he has on paper, like the career academic he was, that I can't help wondering about the stuff he "knows" because his dad told him but he doesn't have written proof for.

[Elladan and Elrohir]

In addition to the above-stated stuff, JRRT's stuff is in a larger font than CT's. The exception to this is in The History of Galadriel and Celeborn, where the font sizes are vice versa. I believe Christopher explains all this in the foreword.

[MatthewM]

Thank you everyone for your kind help!