Michael D. C. Drout

Who is Michael D. C. Drout?

Michael D. C. Drout is the Prentice Professor of English and Former Chair of the Department of English at Wheaton College and 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.

Drout holds a Ph.D. in English from Loyola University Chicago, an M.A. in English from the University of Missouri, an M.A. in Communication from Stanford University, and a B.A. in Professional and Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University.

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, which won the Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship in Inklings Studies, 2003.

He is the editor of the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, a one-volume reference on Tolkien's works and their contexts.

With Douglas A. Anderson and Verlyn Flieger, he is co-editor of Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review,.