Beowulf ─ An English Epic of the Eighth Century Done into Modern Prose

Composed by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon singer toward the end of the first millennium AD, Beowulf is an Old English epic tale recounting the adventures of Beowulf, a Geatish hero from present-day Sweden. He is called on by Hrothgar, King of the Danes, to defeat Grendel, the powerful monster that threatens his great hall.

As one of the earliest extant poems in a modern European language, it depicts a feudal world of blood, victory, and death--a world that exalts heroes who travel great distances to prove their strength, at impossible odds, against supernatural demons and beasts.

Ringing with the beauty, power, and artistry that have kept it alive for a thousand years, this venerable tale is now available as a portable, elegantly designed clothbound edition with an elastic closure and a new introduction.

John Earle (1824–1903) was a British Anglo-Saxon language scholar and professor at the University of Oxford. He wrote more than a dozen books, including Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel (1865) and Anglo-Saxon Literature (1884).

Tom Schneider is a faculty member at California Baptist University, where he teaches English, including early British literature and epic poetry. He earned his Ph.D. in this subject from the University of California, Riverside. His ongoing research and writing is about medieval literature with a special interest in movement––from ideas about the nature of the quest to the way these stories create a sense of motion and rhythm for the reader. He lives in Riverside, California.