Tolkien’s Beowulf translation and Sellic Spell to be published

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. Illustration by J.R.R. Tolkien © The Tolkien Trust 1995. Jacket layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Just a brief post on a big piece of Tolkien news. I’ve been busy today in the pages of the Guardian and the Telegraph as it was announced that Tolkien’s long-awaited translation of Beowulf is to be published at last.

I’ve lined up a preview feature in the Guardian Review for Saturday, and I’ll post a link when that appears.

Edited by Christopher Tolkien—still doing a sterling job at 89—it will also contain extensive selections from JRRT’s commentaries and lectures on the Anglo-Saxon epic poem. A wonderful extra is Sellic Spell, a little-known story which has never seen the light of day, in which Tolkien (we’re told) creates the kind of folktale he imagined might have been told to the original Beowulf audience—or indeed to the characters in Beowulf.

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary together with Sellic Spell is published in the UK by HarperCollins on 22 May, and is announced here.