Book is 493 pp., illus. with reproductions of paintings by many artists (the Beowulf chapter contains none). Hélène Adeline Guerber's prose retelling departs from the paraphrase/condensation method typical of books of this kind and period by taking some liberties with story. It includes some brief quoted passages from John Lesslie Hall's verse translation. A revised edition, with new illustrations, was published under the same title, The Book of the Epic, in 1941.

The retelling begins:

Hrothgar, King of Denmark, traces his origin to Skiold, son of Odin, who as an infant drifted to Denmark's shores. This child lay on a sheaf of ripe wheat, surrounded by priceless weapons, jewels, and a wonderful suit of armor, which proved he must be the scion of some princely race. The childless King and Queen of Denmark therefore gladly adopted him, and in due time he succeeded them and ruled over the whole country. When he died, his subjects, placing his body in the vessel in which he had come, set him adrift.

                                  Men are not able
Soothly to tell us, they in halls who reside,
Heroes under heaven, to what haven he hied. (222-23)

And ends:

Seeing his master about to be crushed to death, Wiglaf—one of Beowulf's followers—now springs forward to aid him, thus causing sufficient diversion to enable Beowulf to creep beneath the dragon, and drive his sword deep into its undefended breast! Although the monster's coils now drop limply away from his body, poor Beowulf has been so sorely burned by its breath that he feels his end is near. Turning to his faithful follower, he thanks him for his aid, bidding him hasten into the cave and bring forth the treasure he has won for his people, so he can feast his eyes upon it before he dies.

                              "Fare thou with haste now
To behold the hoard 'neath the hoar-grayish stone,
Well-lovèd Wiglaf, now the worm is a-lying,
Sore-wounded sleepeth, disseized of his treasure
Go thou in haste that treasures of old I
Gold-wealth may gaze on, together see lying
The ether-bright jewels, be easier able,
Having the heap of hoard-gems, to yield my
Life and the land-folk whom long I have governed."

Sure that the monster can no longer molest them, the rest of the warriors press forward in their turn, and receive the farewells of their dying chief, who, after rehearsing the great deeds he has done, declares he is about to close honorably an eventful career. When he has breathed his last, his followers push the corpse of the dragon off a cliff into the sea, and erect on the headland a funeral barrow for Beowulf's ashes, placing within it part of the treasure he has won, and erecting above it a memorial, or bauta stone, on which they carve the name and deeds of the great hero who saved them from Grendel and from the fiery dragon.

So lamented mourning the men of the Geats,
Fond-loving vassals the fall of their lord,
Said he was kindest of kings under heaven,
Gentlest of men, most winning of manner,
Friendliest to folk-troops and fondest of honor. (228-29; lack of period after "treasure" in verse extract above sic)

Fry and GR both represent this book as a study of the epic rather than a series of retellings: Fry by his abbreviation "epc" for "epic characteristics," and GR by the classification of the book not among translations, where they place other, similar retellings, but among Beowulf studies on "Cultural & Historical/Authorship & Date" (GR's annotation "On epic characteristics" surely derives from Fry's annotation).

Fry and GR also give the title of the book's relevant section as "Anglo-Saxon Epic." In both editions (this 1913 version and the 1941 revised version), the section is titled "Epics of the British Isles," and the Beowulf retelling (the only pre-Norman Conquest content item in the section) is titled "Beowulf." There is no title "Anglo-Saxon Epic" in the book.

MO2 conflates this 1913 Book of the Epic with a different work by Guerber, her Myths and Legends (1909); the two works had been differentiated in MO1 (p. 163).

Fry, GR, and MO1 (p. 163) all incorrectly represent the 1941 version of this book as a reprint of the 1913 Book of the Epic. The 1941 version is a revised edition, with textual revisions being light, but containing a completely different series of illustrations by different artists.

BAM.