New York Times Bestseller Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary contains Tolkien’s complete translation into modern English of the epic poem of the legendary hero Beowulf, who defeated the monster Grendel and his mother before falling in battle with a great dragon. The translation is accompanied by Tolkien’s extensive and insightful commentary on the Old English poem derived from notes used as the basis of his lectures when he was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. Edited by Christopher Tolkien, this magisterial work also includes "Sellic Spell," a "marvellous tale" written by Tolkien suggesting what might have been the form and style of an Old English folktale of Beowulf, in which there was no association with the "historical legends" of the northern kingdoms. “A thrill . . . Beowulf was Tolkien’s lodestar. Everything he did led up to or away from it.” —New Yorker