It is fascinating how many different questions we all have here. Like
Child, I will stay clear of the legal one. Yet my concern was not with hers and
davem's question about what constitutes a new work. My question is more closely related to something
Aiwendil said:
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On the contrary - his goal is clealy (whatever you may think of the particulars of his analysis) to present the text as it was intended by his father.
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Everyone seems to assume that since CT was so close to his father, he knows what JRRT intended. Yet is this a reliable assumption? Instead of the difficulty of determining what one author "intended", now we have the situation of determining what two minds "intended".
We've been through the many and various difficulties in deciding what to determine as Tolkien's final intention on several matters. But it seems to me that people do not stop to ask what might have been the role of CT's own interpretive pov which influenced how he understood or even remembered things about his father's work. And, after all, he is now eighty years old. I do not wish to be mean when I say that at eighty the memory can play tricks, even with those who keep impeccable records.
Child is right of course that texts constantly undergo textual corrections for printing errors. (Although Joyce's Ulysses causes even greater headaches than Tolkien's might). But if this editon will be marketed as "the edition Tolkien would have wanted", well, that raises many other kinds of questions.
I think the collaboration between CT and JRRT will prove to be a fascinating topic for literary history.