Douglas A. Anderson is an independent scholar whose first book was
The Annotated Hobbit (1988; revised enlarged 2002). He helped correct the text of
The Lord of the Rings in both the American and British editions, and these versions contain his introductory “Note on the Text.” He is also the lesser co-author (with Wayne G. Hammond) of
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography (1993). He has edited is a reissue of E. A. Wyke-Smith’s
The Marvellous Land of Snergs (1996), a children’s book originally published in 1927 that provided the impetus of Tolkien’s children’s book
The Hobbit. His anthologies include
Tales Before Tolkien (2003),
H. P. Lovecraft’s Favorite Weird Tales (2005), and
Tales Before Narnia (2008). With Verlyn Flieger, he co-edited
Tolkien On Fairy-stories (2008).
Michael D. C. Drout is the Prentice Professor and Chair of English at Wheaton College, Massachusetts, specializing in Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature, science fiction, and fantasy, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Ursula K. Le Guin. He is best known for his studies of Tolkien's scholarly work on Beowulf and the precursors and textual evolution of the essay Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics, published as Beowulf and the Critics by J. R. R. Tolkien (2002), which won the Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship in Inklings Studies, 2003.
Verlyn Flieger is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Maryland, where she specialized in Mythology and Folklore. Among her publications are
A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Road to Faerie (1997),
Splintered Light, Logos, and Language in Tolkien’s World (2002), and
Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien’s Mythology (2005). With Douglas A. Anderson she edited Tolkien’s
On Fairy-stories (2008).
