[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I'm not of that opinion. I am especially not of the opinion that just because someone can't understand the point of something it must be a shameless cash-in. Unfinished Tales fills in blanks, The Silmarillion as a complete published text is a fulfillment of J.R.R. Tolkien's lifelong dream, but The History of Middle-earth is not meant as something to fill in the blanks in a fan's knowledge. It is intended to give the reader an insight into how the legends developed, what inspired them, and the amount of time that J.R.R.T. spent developing and refining his mythology and languages. Some of the writings in the HoME were unknown to C.R.T. when he published the Silmarillion in 1977: this wasn't a small collection of papers that he was editing together, but sixty years of constant invention, revision and composition, which had been kept in an extremely disordered condition. There were bound to be omissions from the final edited work, and the HoME is intended to lay before the reader a lot of excellent writing that couldn't be included in the Silmarillion or was still sitting at the bottom of a box of documents in 1977. If this writing is of no use to someone who wants a definitive final version of the legends of Middle-earth (as possible and likely a thing as there being a definitive version of Hellenic or Norse mythology), it is still of use to someone who is interested in J.R.R. Tolkien's creative process or who doesn't care how many times something was superseded as long as it's an enjoyable read.

I am currently reading The History of Middle-earth, and so far it has been a fascinating journey through the mind of a truly remarkable man. The Silmarillion by its very nature cannot explain how and why it came to be written, or what inspired its author: the creative process is hidden by a complete and finished narrative. However, Christopher Tolkien was unhappy with the editorial work he had done, so he laid as much of the material he had used before interested readers as he could. The Revised Silmarillion project on the Downs is only possible because of this later work of CJRT's.

Even if the publication of HoME was superfluous, why can we not assume that it was a love of his father's writing (of which he was one of the first fans) that kept Christopher Tolkien editing his way through his father's works instead of devoting his time to his own professorial career? I and many others have found that the HoME have enriched our appreciation of the Tolkien corpus and deepened our understanding, not to mention made available some of his best writing, dropped because a newer version came along or because it was lost in his notes. As Terentianus Maurus pointed out in the quotation I gave above, it's all down to the reader. Go looking for something that tells you 'this is what happened at this point in LotR' in HoME and you will be disappointed. Go looking for an idea of just how fecund was Tolkien's mind or how he approached creative writing and you will find a wealth of information; go looking for good writing, previously unpublished because it failed to fit in with some grandiose all-embracing mythological vision and you will find it.

Again I would like to point out that with Christopher Tolkien people always assume that he's on the make, trying to squeeze as much money and mileage out of his father's work as possible. Not only do I not agree (although I can imagine that I might want to get paid for twenty years of work as well), but I am also mystified at why people are always assuming the worst of Christopher Tolkien, but giving the makers of the recent films the benefit of the doubt. It seems to me to be a completely wrong-headed double standard that profits no-one.