x + 191 pp. A "Bibliographical Note" (ii) explains that the work was first printed at the Kelmscott Press in January, 1895, and that this edition was first printed in 1898. (The August 1904 reprint refers to it as the "Ordinary Edition.") This edition has none of the archaized typeface, elaborate decorations, or color of the Kelmscott edition, but the main contents are otherwise unaltered apart from a few superficial editorial changes.

The translation is divided, by fitt, into numbered and titled sections. It is preceded by the "Argument" or summary of the poem (v-x), and is followed by an index of proper names (181-89) and a short glossary of "The Meaning of Some Words Not Commonly Used Now" (190-91).

The "Argument" begins:

Hrothgar, king of the Danes, lives happily and peacefully, and bethinks him to build a glorious hall called Hart. But a little after, one Grendel, of the kindred of the evil wights that are come of Cain, hears the merry noise of Hart and cannot abide it; so he enters thereinto by night, and slays and carries off and devours thirty of Hrothgar's thanes. Thereby he makes Hart waste for twelve years, and the tidings of this mishap are borne wide about lands. (v)

And ends:

The warriors go to look on Beowulf, and find him and the Worm lying dead together. Wiglaf chooses out seven of them to go void the treasure-house, after having bidden them gather wood for the bale-fire. They shove the Worm over the cliff into the sea, and bear off the treasure in wains. Then they bring Beowulf's corpse to bale, and they kindle it; a woman called the wife of aforetime, it may be Hygd, widow of Hygelac, bemoans him: and twelve children of the athelings ride round the bale, and bemoan Beowulf and praise him: and thus ends the poem. (x)

The translation begins:

[title] THE STORY OF BEOWULF

[title] I. 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)

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. (178-79)

[unfinished business: I need to create an entry and relationship for its inclusion in May Morris's edition of The Collected Works of William Morris (1911).]

• 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.

BAM (from 1898 edition and 1904 reprint).