Book is 144 pp.; color illus. A large-format edition of Crossley-Holland's 1968 translation, with a new introduction by Crossley-Holland. The publisher, Phoebe Phillips Editions, is an imprint of Boydell and Brewer, the latter being named on the back of the dust jacket. The book's many illustrations (photographs of artifacts, and digitally manipulated atmospheric background images) and general appearance are designed to appeal to general non-specialist readers, as well as to educators: the inside rear flap of the dust jacket states that it is the first in a projected four-book series called "The Poetry of Legend: Classics of the Medieval World." Many of the background illustrations are repeated, sometimes with a change of color.

The translation begins:

Listen!
          The fame of Danish kings
in days gone by, the daring feats
worked by those heroes are well known to us.

Scyld Scefing often deprived his enemies,
many tribes of men, of their mead-benches.
He terrified his foes; yet he, as a boy,
had been found a waif; fate made amends for that.
He prospered under heaven, won praise and honour
until the men of every neighbouring tribe,
across the whale's way, were obliged to obey him
and pay him tribute. He was a noble king! (46)

And ends:

Then twelve brave warriors, sons of heroes,
rode round the barrow, sorrowing;
they mourned their king, chanted
an elegy, spoke about that great man:
they exalted his heroic life, lauded
his daring deeds; it is fitting for a man,
when his lord and friend must leave this life,
to mouth words in his praise
and to cherish his memory.
Thus the Geats, his hearth-companions,
grieved over the death of their lord;
they said that of all kings on earth
he was the kindest, the most gentle,
the most just to his people, the most eager for fame. (139)

BAM.