Book is xx + 114 + 32 pp. (the last 32, numbered, being a lengthy publisher’s catalog).  A verse translation of most of Beowulf into couplets of iambic heptameter. The translation is divided into three titled sections: "Grendel," "Grendel's Mother," and "The Fire Drake"; and within these major sections, into 18 titled subsections. Each major section is headed with its "argument," a prose summary. The translation is preceded by Lumsden's introduction (5–18) and is followed by a series of discursive mini-essays, labeled alphabetically A–P by topic (99–114), and finally by a long catalogue of other books by the publisher (occupying a newly paginated series of pp. 1-32).

Lumsden does not translate the poem in its entirety, but rather, skips certain sections. For example, he omits much of Hrothgar's speech after Beowulf presents him with the head of Grendel and the giant sword hilt, and offers this footnote: "Old Hrothgar, whose speeches are always somewhat diffuse, now displays a 'forty parson power' of dulness, and maunders on for many lines in an exceedingly dreary sermon, which it must have taxed all Beowulf's politness to listen to without yawning in the monarch's face. (53-54)

Section I, "Grendel," begins:

                                   I.

                    THE SCYLDING KINGS.

Lo! we have heard of glory won by Gar-Dane Kings of old,
And mighty deeds these princes wrought. Oft with his warriors bold
Since first an outcast he was found, did Scyld the Scefing hurl
From their mead-benches many a folk, and frighted many an earl.
Therein he took his pleasure, and waxed great beneath the sky,
And throve in worship, till to him all folk that dwelt hard by,
And o'er the whale-path, tribute paid, and did his word obey.
Good king was he!

                                        To him was born an heir in after day,
A child in hall; the gift of God to glad the people sent;
For He had seen the long sore straits they, lordless, underwent;
And therefore did the Prince of life, the Lord of glory, shower
All worldly praise on him, the famed Beowulf; and the power
Of Scyld's great heir spread far and wide through all the Danish land. (3)

And the translation ends:

                                                              Then nobles twelve—the chief—
The bold in war—around the barrow rode and spoke their grief.
They mourned their king, and chanted dirge, and much of him they said;
His worthiness they praised, and judged his deeds with tender dread;
As well beseemeth it that men their dear lord's praise should show,
And love him with their hearts when he from lent flesh forth must go.

His hearthmates thus and Gothic folk bewailed their prince's fall,
'Mong kings of earth the mildest, kindest, lovingest of all! (96)

BAM.