"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. From these lectures a substantial selection...