Copyright © West Virginia University Press The Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies 2006

a chronology and encyclopedia rather than a biography, instantly super-seded Humphrey Carpenter’s long-standard Tolkien: A Biography as the source of first reference for biographical data on the man. Together, these three compact volumes, filled with tiny print, dominate the field of Tolkien reference books. To nobody’s surprise, the Companion & Guide received the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies in 2007, as the Reader’s Companion had the previous year. As if that weren’t enough to make the year memorable for encyclopedias, the J.R.R. Tolkien Ency-clopedia, edited by Michael D.C. Drout, also appeared on the shelves. A folio-sized volume with very large print, the Drout encyclopedia looks quite unlike Scull and Hammond, and it reads very differently as well. Its entries by many hands are full of individual character, which is the book’s strength as well as its weakness. Two notable anthologies appeared in 2006. The Lord of the Rings, 1954-2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, edited by Ham-mond and Scull in that order (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press