Did Christopher Tolkien write any original literature himself?

Question

Christopher Tolkien, recently deceased, is best known for his work as editor on many of his famous father's stories set in Middle-earth, most famously The Silmarillion. He also did work as a translator, and he was an Oxford professor like his father. But was he also an author in his own right?

Did Christopher Tolkien ever write his own stories? Or was he only an editor / translator?

Answer 1

Not really

Christopher as an academic

• "The Battle of the Goths and Huns" (1953-1957)
• Hervarar Saga ok Heidreks (1956) (introduction)
• The Pardoner's Tale (1958) (editor)
• The Nun's Priest's Tale (1959) (editor)
• The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise (1960) (translator)
• The Man of Law's Tale (1969) (editor)

Christopher as a contributor to Middle-earth

• Drew the maps for The Lord of the Rings, (and later, for The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, etc.)
• Wrote the chapter "Of the Ruin of Doriath" for The Silmarillion.
• Edited over twenty volumes of his father's writings.
• For more on this topic, see Vincent Ferré's "The Son Behind the Father: Christopher Tolkien as a Writer" (The Great Tales Never End, 2022), which makes the case that Christopher should be considered a writer in his own right, and that his contributions to Middle-earth qualify as literature.

Christopher as a letter writer

Christopher Tolkien was certainly the most intelligent, most insightful, most engaging, and wittiest person I have ever had the pleasure to meet and correspond with, and I bet the same is true for many others. A “letter from Christopher” was always a special occasion of anticipation and pleasure. I of course could never match him as a correspondent, not even close; but that didn’t matter to him: he nonetheless genuinely cared about and engaged my thoughts, questions, and concerns, because we shared so many goals and concerns in common.

Carl Hofstetter

Christopher's posthumous works

It should also be known that in Christopher's will, he makes mention of (possible) unreleased writings of his which he gives the publishing rights of to his wife:

... the ownership (tangible and intangible) of all my archives, writings, manuscripts or typed documents, complete and incomplete works of my creation with task of making use of them in a way she judges appropriate in the interests of my work's moral rights, ... to take control of my archives (preparatory notes, reading notes, outlines, drawings, plans, drafts, letters or handwritten documents, typescripts, annotated manuscripts, proofs, finalised manuscripts, correspondence, electronic files, on all media ... ); ... to decide on the release and publishing of works which have not been released at the time of my death;

It is thus possible that more writing from Christopher will be published in the future.

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Bibliography Sources:

(These are fairly comprehensive and help show that Christopher did not write any of his own traditional non-academic fiction books unrelated to Middle-earth.)

• Tolkienbooks
• Tolkien Gateway
• Tolkien Collector's Guide
• "Christopher Tolkien: A Bibliography", Douglas A. Anderson, in Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth (2000)
• "Christopher Tolkien: Bibliography", Catherine McIlwaine, in The Great Tales Never End (2022).
• Others (less accurate): Wikipedia, isfdb