Douglas A. Anderson

Last updated

Douglas A. Anderson
Born
Douglas Allen Anderson

(1959-12-30) December 30, 1959 (age 64)
OccupationAmerican writer

Douglas Allen Anderson (born December 30, 1959) is an American writer and editor on the subjects of fantasy and medieval literature, specializing in textual analysis of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. His 1988 edition of Tolkien's children's book The Hobbit , The Annotated Hobbit , won him a Mythopoeic Award for scholarship.

Contents

Early life

Douglas Anderson was born in Valparaiso, Indiana, United States. His first published book was The Annotated Hobbit (1988), which grew out of a study of J. R. R. Tolkien's revisions to the various editions of The Hobbit following the publication of The Lord of the Rings . The book consisted of Anderson's detailed explanations alongside Tolkien's text. A revised and illustrated edition was published in 2002. [1]

Career

Anderson's textual studies of The Lord of the Rings are the core of the Houghton Mifflin revised American edition of 1987, incorporating various changes made to British editions at Tolkien's direction. He contributed a "Note on the Text" discussing the history of these changes, which was subsequently incorporated into later editions with various minor revisions.

With Verlyn Flieger and Michael D. C. Drout, he is a founding editor of Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review; the first volume appeared in 2004. [2]

Anderson has edited modern editions of works by fantasy authors including Leonard Cline, Kenneth Morris, Evangeline Walton and William Hope Hodgson. [3] He is a visiting lecturer at Signum University. [3] Aside from his editing and Tolkien studies, he is a bookseller, having worked first in Ithaca, New York, and then in Indiana. [1] He runs the publishing business Nodens Books, which seeks to revive the work of forgotten authors. [3]

Awards and distinctions

The Annotated Hobbit won the 1990 Mythopoeic Award for scholarship. [4]

Books

Written
Edited

Related Research Articles

<i>The History of Middle-earth</i> Book series on Tolkiens legendarium edited by Christopher Tolkien

The History of Middle-earth is a 12-volume series of books published between 1983 and 1996 by George Allen & Unwin in the UK and by Houghton Mifflin in the US, that collect and analyse much of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, compiled and edited by his son Christopher Tolkien. The series shows the development over time of Tolkien's conception of Middle-earth as a fictional place with its own peoples, languages, and history, from his earliest notions of "a mythology for England" through to the development of the stories that make up The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. It is not a "history of Middle-earth" in the sense of being a chronicle of events in Middle-earth written from an in-universe perspective; it is instead an out-of-universe history of Tolkien's creative process. In 2000, the twelve volumes were republished in three limited edition omnibus volumes. Non-deluxe editions of the three volumes were published in 2002.

<i>The Atlas of Middle-earth</i> 1981 book by Karen Wynn Fonstad

The Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad is an atlas of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional realm of Middle-earth. It was published in 1981, following Tolkien's major works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. It provides many maps at different levels of detail, from whole lands to cities and individual buildings, and of major events like the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. The maps are grouped by period, namely the First, Second, and Third Ages of Middle-earth, with chapters on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. A final chapter looks at geographic themes such as climate, vegetation, population, and languages around Middle-earth.

Ælfwine the mariner is a fictional character found in various early versions of J. R. R. Tolkien's Legendarium. Tolkien envisaged Ælfwine as an Anglo-Saxon who visited and befriended the Elves and acted as the source of later mythology. Thus, in the frame story, Ælfwine is the stated author of the various translations in Old English that appear in the twelve-volume The History of Middle-earth edited by Christopher Tolkien.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mythopoeic Awards</span> Literary award

The Mythopoeic Awards for literature and literary studies are given annually for outstanding works in the fields of myth, fantasy, and the scholarly study of these areas. Established by the Mythopoeic Society in 1971, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award is given for "fiction in the spirit of the Inklings", and the Scholarship Award for non-fiction work. The award is a statuette of a seated lion, with a plaque on the base. It has drawn resemblance to, and is often called, the "Aslan".

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the real-world history and notable fictional elements of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy universe. It covers materials created by Tolkien; the works on his unpublished manuscripts, by his son Christopher Tolkien; and films, games and other media created by other people.

The term Middle-earth canon, also called Tolkien's canon, is used for the published writings of J. R. R. Tolkien regarding Middle-earth as a whole. The term is also used in Tolkien fandom to promote, discuss and debate the idea of a consistent fictional canon within a given subset of Tolkien's writings.

Carl Franklin Hostetter is a Tolkien scholar and NASA computer scientist. He has edited and annotated many of J. R. R. Tolkien's linguistic writings, publishing them in Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon.

The works of J. R. R. Tolkien have generated a body of research covering many aspects of his fantasy writings. These encompass The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, along with his legendarium that remained unpublished until after his death, and his constructed languages, especially the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin. Scholars from different disciplines have examined the linguistic and literary origins of Middle-earth, and have explored many aspects of his writings from Christianity to feminism and race.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien's legendarium</span> J. R. R. Tolkiens mythological writings

Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings, and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of The Silmarillion and documented in his 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth. The legendarium's origins reach back to 1914, when Tolkien began writing poems and story sketches, drawing maps, and inventing languages and names as a private project to create a mythology for England. The earliest story, "The Voyage of Earendel, the Evening Star", is from 1914; he revised and rewrote the legendarium stories for most of his adult life.

<i>Tolkiens Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth</i> 2000 collection of scholarly essays edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter

Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth is a collection of scholarly essays edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter on the 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth, relating to J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction and compiled and edited by his son, Christopher. It was published by Greenwood Press in 2000. That series comprises a substantial part of "Tolkien's legendarium", the body of Tolkien's mythopoeic writing that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings and which Christopher Tolkien summarized in his construction of The Silmarillion.

<i>The Lord of the Rings: A Readers Companion</i>

The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion (2005) is a nonfiction book by the scholars Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. It is an annotated reference to J. R. R. Tolkien's heroic romance, The Lord of the Rings.

Verlyn Flieger is an author, editor, and Professor Emerita in the Department of English at the University of Maryland at College Park, where she taught courses in comparative mythology, medieval literature, and the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. She is well known as a Tolkien scholar, especially for her books Splintered Light, A Question of Time, and Interrupted Music. She has won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award four times for her work on Tolkien's Middle-earth writings.

Michael D. C. Drout is an American Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval at Wheaton College. He is an author and editor specializing in Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature, science fiction and fantasy, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Ursula K. Le Guin.

<i>Tolkien Studies</i> Academic journal

Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review is an academic journal founded in 2004 publishing papers on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. The journal's founding editors are Douglas A. Anderson, Michael D. C. Drout, and Verlyn Flieger, and the current editors are Michael D. C. Drout, Verlyn Flieger, and David Bratman. It states that it is the first scholarly journal published by an academic press in the area of Tolkien research.

<i>The Road to Middle-Earth</i> Book of literary criticism of Tolkien

The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology is a scholarly study of the Middle-earth works of J. R. R. Tolkien written by Tom Shippey and first published in 1982. The book discusses Tolkien's philology, and then examines in turn the origins of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and his minor works. An appendix discusses Tolkien's many sources. Two further editions extended and updated the work, including a discussion of Peter Jackson's film version of The Lord of the Rings.

<i>The Annotated Hobbit</i> Douglas A. Andersons annotated version from the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Annotated Hobbit: The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is an edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Hobbit with a commentary by Douglas A. Anderson. It was first published in 1988 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first American publication of The Hobbit, and by Unwin Hyman of London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard C. West</span> American librarian and Tolkien scholar (1944–2020)

Richard Carroll West was an American librarian and one of the first Tolkien scholars. He is best known for his 1975 essay on the interlace structure of The Lord of the Rings, for which he won the 1976 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inkling Studies.

J. R. R. Tolkien used frame stories throughout his Middle-earth writings, especially his legendarium, to make the works resemble a genuine mythology written and edited by many hands over a long period of time. He described in detail how his fictional characters wrote their books and transmitted them to others, and showed how later in-universe editors annotated the material.

<i>Tolkiens Art: A Mythology for England</i> 1979 book by Jane Chance

Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England' is a 1979 book of Tolkien scholarship by Jane Chance, writing then as Jane Chance Nitzsche. The book looks in turn at Tolkien's essays "On Fairy-Stories" and "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"; The Hobbit; the fairy-stories "Leaf by Niggle" and "Smith of Wootton Major"; the minor works "Lay of Autrou and Itroun", "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth", "Imram", and Farmer Giles of Ham; The Lord of the Rings; and very briefly in the concluding section, The Silmarillion. In 2001, a second edition extended all the chapters but still treated The Silmarillion, that Tolkien worked on throughout his life, as a sort of coda.

J. R. R. Tolkien decided to increase the reader's feeling that the story in his 1954–55 book The Lord of the Rings was real, by framing the main text with an elaborate editorial apparatus that extends and comments upon it. This material, mainly in the book's appendices, effectively includes a fictional editorial figure much like himself who is interested in philology, and who says he is translating a manuscript which has somehow come into his hands, having somehow survived the thousands of years since the Third Age. He called the book a heroic romance, giving it a medieval feeling, and describing its time-frame as the remote past. Among the steps he took to make its setting, Middle-earth, believable were to develop its geography, history, peoples, genealogies, and unseen background in great detail, complete with editorial commentary in each case.

References

  1. 1 2 "Douglas A. Anderson". Houghton Mifflin. Archived from the original on July 9, 2021. Retrieved July 3, 2021.
  2. "Volume 1, 2004". Tolkien Studies. Retrieved July 3, 2021. The founding editors are Douglas A. Anderson (The Annotated Hobbit), Michael D. C. Drout (Beowulf and the Critics), and Verlyn Flieger (Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World).
  3. 1 2 3 "Douglas A. Anderson Visiting Lecturer". Signum University . Retrieved July 3, 2021.
  4. "Mythopoeic Scholarship Award: Inklings Studies". Mythopoeic Society . Retrieved July 3, 2021.

Sources