viii + 119 pp., with marginal designs, decorated capitals, and rubricated section titles and marginal plot points in this large-format, extremely elaborate presentation from Morris's craft press. The translation is preceded by a summary ("Argument," iv-vi), and is followed by an index of proper names (112-17) and glossary of archaisms used by Morris (118-19). 308 copies printed.

The colophon reads:

Here endeth the Story of Beowulf, done out of the Old English tongue by William Morris & A. J. Wyatt, and printed by the said William Morris at the Kelmscott Press, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, in the County of Middlesex, and finished on the 10th day of January, 1895 | Kelmscott | Sold by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press. (111)

The translation begins:

[title] The Story Of Beowulf

[title, rubricated] And first of the kindred of Hrothgar

What! we of the Spear-Danes of yore days, so was it
That we learn'd of the fair fame of Kings of the folks
And the athelings a-faring in framing of valour
Oft then Scyld the Sheaf-son from the hosts of the scathers
From kindreds a many the mead-settles tore
It was then the earl fear'd them, sithence was he first
Found bare and all-lacking; so solace he bided
Wax'd under the welkin in worship to thrive
Until it was so that the round-about sitters
All over the whale-road must hearken his will
And yield him the tribute. A good king was that. (1; lack of punctuation sic; this first page is printed to right margin like prose, with verse-lines marked using leaf dingbats in running text)

And ends:

Then round the howe rode the deer of the battle,
The bairns of the Athelings, twelve were they in all.
Their care would they mourn, and bemoan them their king,
The word-lay would they utter and over the man speak:
They accounted his earlship and mighty deeds done,
And doughtily deem'd them; as due as it is
That each one his friend-lord with words should belaud,
And love in his heart, whenas forth shall he
Away from the body be fleeting at last.

In such wise they grieved, the folk of the Geats,
For the fall of their lord, e'en they his hearth-fellows;
Quoth they that he was a world-king forsooth,
The mildest of all men, unto men kindest,
To his folk the most gentlest, most yearning of fame. (110)

[unfinished, tdic--need to give sample text from "Argument"; also need to confirm the source of information about number of copies printed.]

• Michael Alexander, Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), at 176-77.

• Robert Boenig, “The Importance of Morris’s Beowulf,” Journal of the William Morris Society 12 (1997): 7-13.

• Chris Jones, "The Reception of William Morris's Beowulf," in Writing on the Image: Reading William Morris, ed. David Latham (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 197-208.

• R. M. Liuzza, “Lost in Translation: Some Versions of Beowulf in the Nineteenth Century,” English Studies 83 (2002): 281–95.

• Hugh Magennis, Translating Beowulf: Modern Versions in English Verse (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011).

• P. M. Tilling, "William Morris's Translation of Beowulf: Studies in His Vocabulary," Occasional Papers in Linguistics and Language Learning 8 (1981): 163-75.

Fry and GR claim that the 1895 edition bears no title, but its extremely elaborate decorated title page reads, in large letters, "the tale of Beowulf sometime king of the folk of the Weder Geats" (capitalization given as in original).

BAM (copy in Cushing Library at Texas A&M University).