--- product_id: 16750018 title: "Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary" price: "£21.37" currency: GBP in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.co.uk/products/16750018-beowulf-a-translation-and-commentary store_origin: GB region: United Kingdom --- # Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary **Price:** £21.37 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary - **How much does it cost?** £21.37 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.co.uk](https://www.desertcart.co.uk/products/16750018-beowulf-a-translation-and-commentary) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description A beautifully designed hardcover box set containing four classic myths and legends composed or translated by J.R.R. Tolkien — Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún , The Fall of Arthur , and Beowulf . The fifth set in a series of affordable hardcover box sets celebrating the literary achievement of Christopher Tolkien, featuring double-sided dust jackets. Set 5 contains Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún , The Fall of Arthur , and Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary . Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl are two poems by an unknown author written in about 1400. Sir Gawain is a romance, a fairy-tale for adults, full of life and colour; Pearl is apparently an elegy on the death of a child but, like Gawain, it is also a sophisticated and moving debate on much less tangible matters. Sir Orfeo is a slighter romance, belonging to an earlier and different tradition. It was a special favourite of Tolkien's. The three translations are here uniquely accompanied with the complete text of Tolkien's acclaimed 1953 W.P. Ker Memorial Lecture that he delivered on Sir Gawain. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún tells the epic story of the Norse hero, Sigurd, the dragon-slayer, during a time of gods, betrayal and fierce battles; the revenge of his wife, Gudrún; and the Fall of the Nibelungs. Told in verse composed by J.R.R. Tolkien derived from the ancient poetry of the Poetic Edda and the prose Völsunga Saga, this masterful fusion of myth and poetry is accompanied by notes and commentary by Christopher Tolkien. The Fall of Arthur tells the extraordinary story of the final days of England's legendary hero, King Arthur. It is the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur King of Britain, and may well be regarded as his finest and most skilful achievement in the use of the Old English alliterative metre. The long narrative poem is accompanied by significant if tantalising notes, in which can be discerned clear if mysterious associations of the Arthurian conclusion with The Silmarillion . The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was completed in 1926: he returned to it later but seems never to have considered its publication. This edition is twofold, for the translation is here paired with an illuminating written commentary on the poem by the translator himself, prepared for a series of lectures given at Oxford in the 1930s. From these lectures there arises a sense of the immediacy and clarity of his vision. It is as if Tolkien entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beached their ship on the coast of Denmark, listening to the rising anger of Beowulf at the taunting of Unferth, or looking up in amazement at Grendel's terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot. These are accompanied by Sellic spell , a "marvellous tale" written by Tolkien suggesting what might have been the form and style of an Old English folk-tale of Beowulf, in which there was no association with the "historical legends" of the Northern kingdoms. Published together for the first time, these four books—all edited by the author's son and literary executor—collect a fascinating period of Christopher Tolkien's forty-year career devoted to presenting his father J.R.R. Tolkien's scholarly writings on the myths and legends of northern Europe, a unique accomplishment that celebrates the academic brilliance and storytelling genius of one of the twentieth century's finest literary pioneers. Review: Tolkien As Academic Gives Us A New Treasure - Had J.R.R. Tolkien never written The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or The Silmarillion his fame today would rest on his long career at Oxford University as professor of Anglo-Saxon. There he did pioneering work in philology, but his greatest renown would come from his life long labor of love: studying the great poem Beowulf. Much of Tolkien's work on Beowulf, especially his revolutionary essay "The Monsters and the Critics," has been widely available for many years. Now Christopher Tolkien, serving as his father's literary executor, has give us another treasure: J.R.R. Tolkien's own prose translation of Beowulf. Christopher Tolkien states in his Preface that the translation was completed by 1926, when his father was 34 and still in the early years of his career. Over the next twenty years Tolkien continued to study and reflect on Beowulf, writing essays and giving lectures and classes. In preparing Tolkien's translation for publication his son had to choose between several different manuscripts and then deal with the truly arduous task of selecting from a vast body of work those notes and commentaries which would be most illuminating. The result is an amazing almost line by line analysis of the translation. As yet I've only had time to dip in here and there, but wherever I've looked I've found some fascinating insights and new information, such as that "Hwaet", the famous first word of Beowulf which Tolkien translated as "Lo!" is an anacrusis or "striking up" that derived from minstrels, or that Beowulf's "ice-bears" could not have been polar bears since that species was not known in Europe until much later. If this edition contained only Tolkien's translation with his son's notes and commentary that alone would make it worthwhile, but it also includes another gem, Tolkien's story "Sellic Spell" in both modern English and Old English. Tolkien recognized that there must have been an original Anglo-Saxon tale that was a source for the poem Beowulf. "Sellic Spell" is an attempt (or attempts, as in his customary fashion Tolkien wrote several versions) to reconstruct that tale. So we have a tale taht begins "Once upon a time . . ." that tells the tale of a foundling child called Beewolf, his adventures with his companions Handshoe and Ashwood, and the monsters Grinder and his dam. It's an intriguing and beautiful tale which I've not yet had time to savor in full, but I already know it's one to which I will return many times. Finally, the book concludes with two poems, or two versions of the same poem "The Lay of Beowulf," which Tolkien noted were intended to be sung. They are short but very vivid, and it isn't surprising that Christopher Tolkien notes that he remembers his father singing one to him when he was a small boy in the early 1930s. While this volume will never have the readership enjoyed by J.R.R. Tolkien's stories of Middle-earth, it makes a wonderful feast for those who,like me, were introduced to Beowulf and other treasures of Old English by him. Nor will those who pick up Beowulf seeking echoes of Middle-earth be disappointed, for there is much here to remind them of its denizens. Review: Great Translation with Excellent Extra Material - As one who wrote the Tolkien Estate in the past requesting that they publish Tolkien's Beowulf translation, I was overjoyed when this book was announced a few months back. And I wasn't disappointed, either. As with many, it is largely due to Tolkien that I gained an interest in Anglo-Saxons, their language and their literature. I first read Seamus Heaney's translation, which I loved at first, but gradually came to appreciate considerably less over time. The more I learned about Anglo-Saxon, the more I realized that Heaney's "translation" was more of a retelling than an accurate representation of the original poem's content. It became funny to me that Heaney's edition contained side-by-side Anglo-Saxon text - a somewhat damning choice, if you ask me, because it's an in-book proof of Heaney's straying away from the meaning of the original poem. Tolkien's translation came to the rescue here. Although the translation is in prose, which has agitated some reviewers, I find that the translation still holds true to the original manuscript very well. Tolkien's prose is so good (as readers of LOTR and the Silmarillion can attest) that one ought to see past the abandonment of scop verse and be grateful that Tolkien translated Beowulf in the first place; the result is a beautiful piece of writing, and I have no complaints about the prose form. Some might wonder about some of Tolkien's word choices. Some are simply older versions of words we still use today (gripe instead of grip, corse instead of corpse), but there's nothing to distract us from actually understanding the poem. Another interesting word choice is his use of 'knight' when describing the warriors Beowulf and his ilk are associated with. Of course there weren't knights in the old Germanic tribes, but I think knight is still a good word to use in this situation. We don't really have another word equivalent to an elite warrior, so using the word 'knight' to indicate a member of a king's war band is legitimate and conveys their wealth and power better than simply saying 'soldier' or 'warrior'. Perhaps the most iffy aspect of Tolkien's translation is, to me, the way he calls Grendel and his mother trolls. This will probably bother few, if anyone, but I find it slightly irritating because the troll is Norse, and the Anglo-Saxons had no equivalent. The word troll is not in the Anglo-Saxon text, and I wish Tolkien would have just translated the words describing the monsters as they were in the Anglo-Saxon text, rather than making the all-too common mistake of projecting other Germanic cultures onto the Anglo-Saxon literature. Overall, the translation is beautiful and is currently my favorite (though I haven't read them all yet). The commentary is amazing, too, for anyone interesting in the Anglo-Saxon language. Tolkien was a genius, and it shows here. His retelling of Beowulf as a fairy tale in his "Sellic Spell" is really fun too. I highly recommend this to people who love Beowulf, Germanic legend in general, classic literature, and anyone else who enjoys Tolkien's prose. However, since lots of people have a hard time with Tolkien's prose and skip his books for Peter Jackson's [extremely terrible] movies, I don't recommend this book to everyone, as the translation is some of Tolkien's more difficult and archaic writing. Otherwise, enjoy! ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #21,327 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #77 in Epic Poetry (Books) #88 in Fantasy Anthologies #215 in Historical British & Irish Literature | | Customer Reviews | 4.7 out of 5 stars 1,808 Reviews | ## Images ![Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71bj0zbYCoL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Tolkien As Academic Gives Us A New Treasure *by J***D on May 23, 2014* Had J.R.R. Tolkien never written The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or The Silmarillion his fame today would rest on his long career at Oxford University as professor of Anglo-Saxon. There he did pioneering work in philology, but his greatest renown would come from his life long labor of love: studying the great poem Beowulf. Much of Tolkien's work on Beowulf, especially his revolutionary essay "The Monsters and the Critics," has been widely available for many years. Now Christopher Tolkien, serving as his father's literary executor, has give us another treasure: J.R.R. Tolkien's own prose translation of Beowulf. Christopher Tolkien states in his Preface that the translation was completed by 1926, when his father was 34 and still in the early years of his career. Over the next twenty years Tolkien continued to study and reflect on Beowulf, writing essays and giving lectures and classes. In preparing Tolkien's translation for publication his son had to choose between several different manuscripts and then deal with the truly arduous task of selecting from a vast body of work those notes and commentaries which would be most illuminating. The result is an amazing almost line by line analysis of the translation. As yet I've only had time to dip in here and there, but wherever I've looked I've found some fascinating insights and new information, such as that "Hwaet", the famous first word of Beowulf which Tolkien translated as "Lo!" is an anacrusis or "striking up" that derived from minstrels, or that Beowulf's "ice-bears" could not have been polar bears since that species was not known in Europe until much later. If this edition contained only Tolkien's translation with his son's notes and commentary that alone would make it worthwhile, but it also includes another gem, Tolkien's story "Sellic Spell" in both modern English and Old English. Tolkien recognized that there must have been an original Anglo-Saxon tale that was a source for the poem Beowulf. "Sellic Spell" is an attempt (or attempts, as in his customary fashion Tolkien wrote several versions) to reconstruct that tale. So we have a tale taht begins "Once upon a time . . ." that tells the tale of a foundling child called Beewolf, his adventures with his companions Handshoe and Ashwood, and the monsters Grinder and his dam. It's an intriguing and beautiful tale which I've not yet had time to savor in full, but I already know it's one to which I will return many times. Finally, the book concludes with two poems, or two versions of the same poem "The Lay of Beowulf," which Tolkien noted were intended to be sung. They are short but very vivid, and it isn't surprising that Christopher Tolkien notes that he remembers his father singing one to him when he was a small boy in the early 1930s. While this volume will never have the readership enjoyed by J.R.R. Tolkien's stories of Middle-earth, it makes a wonderful feast for those who,like me, were introduced to Beowulf and other treasures of Old English by him. Nor will those who pick up Beowulf seeking echoes of Middle-earth be disappointed, for there is much here to remind them of its denizens. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Great Translation with Excellent Extra Material *by W***T on June 16, 2014* As one who wrote the Tolkien Estate in the past requesting that they publish Tolkien's Beowulf translation, I was overjoyed when this book was announced a few months back. And I wasn't disappointed, either. As with many, it is largely due to Tolkien that I gained an interest in Anglo-Saxons, their language and their literature. I first read Seamus Heaney's translation, which I loved at first, but gradually came to appreciate considerably less over time. The more I learned about Anglo-Saxon, the more I realized that Heaney's "translation" was more of a retelling than an accurate representation of the original poem's content. It became funny to me that Heaney's edition contained side-by-side Anglo-Saxon text - a somewhat damning choice, if you ask me, because it's an in-book proof of Heaney's straying away from the meaning of the original poem. Tolkien's translation came to the rescue here. Although the translation is in prose, which has agitated some reviewers, I find that the translation still holds true to the original manuscript very well. Tolkien's prose is so good (as readers of LOTR and the Silmarillion can attest) that one ought to see past the abandonment of scop verse and be grateful that Tolkien translated Beowulf in the first place; the result is a beautiful piece of writing, and I have no complaints about the prose form. Some might wonder about some of Tolkien's word choices. Some are simply older versions of words we still use today (gripe instead of grip, corse instead of corpse), but there's nothing to distract us from actually understanding the poem. Another interesting word choice is his use of 'knight' when describing the warriors Beowulf and his ilk are associated with. Of course there weren't knights in the old Germanic tribes, but I think knight is still a good word to use in this situation. We don't really have another word equivalent to an elite warrior, so using the word 'knight' to indicate a member of a king's war band is legitimate and conveys their wealth and power better than simply saying 'soldier' or 'warrior'. Perhaps the most iffy aspect of Tolkien's translation is, to me, the way he calls Grendel and his mother trolls. This will probably bother few, if anyone, but I find it slightly irritating because the troll is Norse, and the Anglo-Saxons had no equivalent. The word troll is not in the Anglo-Saxon text, and I wish Tolkien would have just translated the words describing the monsters as they were in the Anglo-Saxon text, rather than making the all-too common mistake of projecting other Germanic cultures onto the Anglo-Saxon literature. Overall, the translation is beautiful and is currently my favorite (though I haven't read them all yet). The commentary is amazing, too, for anyone interesting in the Anglo-Saxon language. Tolkien was a genius, and it shows here. His retelling of Beowulf as a fairy tale in his "Sellic Spell" is really fun too. I highly recommend this to people who love Beowulf, Germanic legend in general, classic literature, and anyone else who enjoys Tolkien's prose. However, since lots of people have a hard time with Tolkien's prose and skip his books for Peter Jackson's [extremely terrible] movies, I don't recommend this book to everyone, as the translation is some of Tolkien's more difficult and archaic writing. Otherwise, enjoy! ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A treat *by J***S on June 23, 2014* I've been a fan of both Beowulf and Tolkien since high school, and in college, after reading "The Monsters and the Critics" while studying Anglo-Saxon England, the two intersected. Tolkien changed the way I looked not only at Beowulf, but also fiction and literature in general. Now, we have Tolkien's own version of the poem, along with ample commentary and a few interesting extras for Tolkien fans. At first I was disappointed when I found out that the translation was in prose. One of the great strengths of Anglo-Saxon verse was its strong, strident rhythm, and I worried that prose would iron out a lot of that beauty. I was wrong. The translation is a pleasure to read. Tolkien, translating quite literally throughout, captures in modern English the flavor of the original, whether in its brawny fights, its many discursive asides, or its longing, painful contemplations of death. This is where the requisite comparisons to the late Seamus Heaney's Beowulf comes in: the thing about Heaney's translation was that it was great modern English poetry, but it was, in many places, not particularly literal. The famous line "God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping," for instance, Tolkien translates "...Grendel walking. The wrath of God was on him." Less beautiful, perhaps, but more Anglo-Saxon. There is room for both on my shelf. The commentary, drawn from Tolkien's writing and lectures on the poem by his son, is extensive but by no means exhaustive. The bulk of the commentary deals with the most famous third of Beowulf, and there are significant chunks of the poem with no commentary whatsoever. This is hardly a bad thing--any commentary on a favorite poem by a favorite author is appreciated. The commentary itself ranges from notes on history or textual criticism to lengthy, minute debate on individual phrases or words. I enjoyed it all, but realize it's not for everyone. The book includes Sellic Spell, a pair of short prose versions of Beowulf by Tolkien. Both are in the style of the Icelandic saga (Volsungsaga, in particular), but while the first is a fairly straightforward retelling of Beowulf, the second differs greatly from the poem. It actually reminded me of John Gardner's great novel Grendel in some ways; apparently Tolkien deconstructed the poem years ahead of Gardner! Included with the Sellic Spell is a textual history, breaking down the development of the second version from the first, that provides some insight into Tolkien creative dabbling and tweaking. The final extras are a pair of rhyming lays, again retelling the story of Beowulf. The poems are fine themselves, but Christopher Tolkien includes the poignant note that he--now nearly ninety--remembers his father singing them to him as a boy. Recommended. ## Frequently Bought Together - Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary - Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Pearl, And Sir Orfeo - The Fall Of Arthur --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.co.uk/products/16750018-beowulf-a-translation-and-commentary](https://www.desertcart.co.uk/products/16750018-beowulf-a-translation-and-commentary) --- *Product available on Desertcart United Kingdom* *Store origin: GB* *Last updated: 2026-08-07*