The Tolkien Estate has signed a worldwide rights deal with HarperCollins to publish Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary by J.R.R. Tolkien.
This is the first time Tolkein’s notes have been published alongside the work. The author’s son Christopher Tolkien edited the work.
“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,” stated Christopher Tolkien. “This edition is twofold, for there exists an illuminating commentary on the text of the poem by the translator himself, in the writt en form of a series of lectures given at Oxford in the 1930s; and from these lectures a substantial selection has been made, to form also a commentary on the translation in this book.”
The book is slated for publication in May.