The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was an early work, very
distinctive in its mode, completed in 1926: he returned to it later to make
hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication. This
edition is twofold, for there exists an illuminating commentary on the text of
the poem by the translator himself, in the written form of a series of lectures
given at Oxford in the 1930s; and from these lectures a substantial selection
has been made, to form also a commentary on the translation in this book.
From his creative attention to detail in these lectures there arises a sense