The Toni Morrison Encyclopedia.(Book Review)

Ed. by Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2003. 428p. alkaline $89.95 (ISBN 0-313-31699-6).

Now seventy-two, Toni Morrison has had an extraordinary literary career. The author of seven highly acclaimed novels, she has also written literary criticism and cultural commentary, edited essay collections on race and culture and, more recently, collaborated with her son, Slade, on two children's books. Morrison's fiction has garnered several major literary prizes, including a National Book Critics' Circle Award in 1978 (for Song of Solomon) and a Pulitzer in 1988 (for Beloved). The crowning achievement, of course, came in 1993, the year she received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Morrison was just the eighth woman writer to win that honor; she is also, to date, the only black woman who has done so.

Starting with her first novel, The Bluest …