Ro alerted us to the astounding news that a handwritten manuscript of Beowulf was found buried in a box of JRR Tolkien’s papers that are housed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England by Michael Drout, assistant professor of English at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. Drout was researching Anglo-Saxon scholarship at the time for his book ‘Beowulf and the Critics’, published earlier this month. According to the Sunday Times, which has reported this story, “I was sitting there going through the transcripts when I saw these four bound volumes at the bottom of the box. I started looking through and realised I had found an entire book of material that had never seen the light of day.” This manuscript consists of a translation and line by line interpretation of the epic poem. It is considered by scholars to be much closer to the original Anglo Saxon than the latest publication.
We are searching for a postable link to this story now, but in the meantime, we wanted to bring you the news that Tolkien’s Beowulf manuscript is going to be published next summer.
