A unique parallel edition of Beowulf with the original Anglo-Saxon and Gummere's celebrated poetic translation on facing pages.

"The whole thing is sombre, tragic, sinister, curiously real. ... . It is laden with history, leading back into the dark heathen ages beyond the memory of song, but not beyond the reach of imagination" - J. R. R. Tolkien.

The epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf had "a deep and detailed impact on what Tolkien wrote - from his earliest poem of Middle-earth (1914), right through The Hobbit ... and The Lord of the Rings." - John Garth author of Tolkien and the Great War.

"The story of Beowulf, Grendel, Grendel's mother and the Dragon [is] surely the basic story of all literature ... It is an epic that summons up a world whose trappings have long since disappeared, the trappings of the warrior ethos, and morality of almost prehistoric Germanic times; but the essential 'message' has not changed. It is about courage and resolve, about duty and responsibility, about honour and achievement; but it is also about the transitoriness of things, and the inevitability of death, however glorious the life. It is both a celebration of humanity and an elegy. The poem Beowulf is one of the glories of European literature." - Magnus Magnusson.

Beowulf, the greatest work of Anglo-Saxon literature, and "one of the glories of European literature," is set in the mists of Scandinavia, interweaving history and myth. It has been translated into English over seventy times, has been widely studied, and has influenced the popular imagination through Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

The young hero, Beowulf, receiving reports that a monster has been terrorising the neighbouring Danes nightly in their sum