Book is vi + 342 pp. + a 2-page advertisement of other works by the same author issued by Seeley and Co. A paraphrase almost entirely in prose that follows Beowulf closely with little compression, dividing it into three titled sections: "The Slaying of Grendel," "Grendel's Mother," and "The Dragon." In two places, Church embeds a passage of verse: where Hrothgar's scop is composing a comparison of Beowulf to Sigemund (21), and the start of the scop's recounting of the Finnsburh episode (24). Both are in rhyming couplets (sample given below).

Church's very short preface acknowledges the aid he received from Kemble's and Earle's translations. The Beowulf story is followed by a series of tales from Malory and then the Nibelungenlied. The collection went through multiple editions and reprints: 1900, 1904, 1913, and 1918, at least.

The Beowulf story begins:

[title] The Slaying of Grendel

In the days of old the House of the Scyldings bare rule in Denmark. The first of the line was Scyld, whom men called "Son of the Sheaf" because he came no man knew whence, being a little child in a boat with a sheaf of corn. He grew to be a mighty man of valour, subduing the robber tribes that sailed over the seas seeking for plunder, and compelling the nations round about to pay him tribute. A good King was he and a great, and God gave him a son for the comfort of his people, for He knew in what evil case that nation stands that lacks a king to rule over it. (3)

And ends:

After this the people built a great barrow on the hill. High it was and broad, and such as they that travel on the sea could see for many a mile. For days they laboured to make it great and high. And round the barrow they made a great embankment in such fashion as they that are wise in such matters command. And in the barrow they hid the treasure, thinking it meet that it should not profit the generations that were to come any more than it had profited the generations that had been.

And when all these things were ended, twelve war-chiefs, men of royal race all of them, rode round the barrow making lamentation for the dead King, and praising him for all the noble deeds that he had done, and for that he was of all the kings on earth the gentlest and most coureous, but withal a great lover of praise and glory. (60)

Church's longer verse passage reads thus, in its entirety:

Then the bard, the maker of lays, after telling of the dreadful deeds of Grendel and of how Beowulf had vanquished him, sang thus:

"How shall we praise him? to whom compare?
To Sigemund, Waelson, the dragon-slayer.
Never, I trow, did braver lord
In the battle-press bear shield and sword;
And ever, where fiercest ran the tide
Of the great war-torrent, by his side
Stout Fitela stood, his sister's son,
A stalwart comrade and true; but one,
And the dourest deed of all, alone
King Sigemund wrought, by the Dragon-stone,
Where the dreadful Worm from days of yore
Kept watch and ward o'er the treasure-store,
A fearsome beast, but the Waelsing Lord,
Nothing afraid, with his noble sword
Shore him through with so stout a blow
That the good steel sank in the earth below,
And the treasure-store of gems and gold
He stored away in his swift ship's hold." (21)

Fry, GR, and MO2 state that the retelling is "selected" or "partial," but it follows the whole storyline with little compression.

Fry, MO1, GR, and MO2 all give the title as "Beowulf" rather than "The Story of Beowulf," as it is given both in the table of contents and at the head of the story.

MO2's note "cp. Steineck 1898" appears to originate in a misinterpretation of GR's unnumbered entry following GR 1693. GR's item is a cross-reference to Steineck that was placed out of order in GR (their usual practice is to place such entries within the chronological sequence and, within a single year, to order them alphabetically; thus Steineck for 1892 should have followed Ragozin for the same year, their entry 1694). There is no textual relationship between Church's English children's version and Steineck's German paraphrase.

BAM.