William Morris and the scholar A. J. Wyatt render the Old English epic line by line: Beowulf of the Geats crosses the sea to free Hrothgar’s hall Heorot from the monster Grendel, follows Grendel’s mother into her mere, and in old age as king faces a fire-breathing dragon. Morris’s deliberately archaic diction keeps the strangeness of the original, with a glossary of unusual words.
A distinctive translation first printed at Morris’s Kelmscott Press in 1895. Download the free EPUB.