The definitive "Riverside edition" of Longfellow's works. Vols. 1-6, The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, are his complete poetry other than his translation of Dante; vols. 7-8 are his prose; and vol. 9-11 are his Dante translation. Vols. 12-14 contain biographical materials. The editor, Scudder, is not credited in the 1886 books. The 6 volumes of poetry are reprinted by the publisher in a single volume in 1893, and there Scudder is named.

Volume 6 is i + 489 pp. + 6 unnumbered plates; b/w illus. The 6 illustrations are a bust of Longfellow (frontispiece) and 5 woodcuts based on paintings; none is associated with "Beowulf's Expedition to Heort" or the other translations from Old English ("The Grave" and "The Soul's Complaint against the Body").

"Beowulf's Expedition to Heort" begins:

Thus then, much care-worn,
The son of Healfden
Sorrowed evermore,
Nor might the prudent hero
His woes avert.
The war was too hard,
Too loath and longsome,
That on the people came,
Dire wrath and grim,
Of night-woes the worst.
This from home heard
Higelac's Thane,
Good among the Goths,
Grendel's deeds. (291)

And ends:

["]Now would I fain
Your origin know,
Ere ye forth
As false spies
Into the Land of the Danes
Farther fare.
Now, ye dwellers afar-off!
Ye sailors of the sea!
Listen to my
One-fold thought.
Quickest is best
To make known
Whence your coming may be." (294-95)

[unfinished business: I need to check the multi-volume 1886 ed. again for the essay "Anglo-Saxon Literature," with its Beowulf prose summary. I need to confirm its location, in either vol. 7 or 8.]

Fry and GR identify Longfellow's 1838 review article as the primary target of their entries, not distinguishing the prose essay, the prose summary, and the poetic translation extracts that were revised and/or used differently after the article's original appearance. (The poem was extracted from the essay and summary for 1845's Poets and Poetry of Europe, and removed entirely in the further revision of the prose essay for 1857's Prose Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.) As a result, Fry's and GR's mentions of the essay's 1886 form no longer represent Longfellow's verse translation at all, although both are published in this 1886 Complete Works (in two different volumes, unassociated).

Not in MO1 or MO2.

BAM.