Waiting on Wednesday (13)

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where bloggers share books they are eagerly anticipating.

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary

By J. R. R. Tolkien
Edited by Christopher Tolkien

Release Date: 22 May 2014

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary: Tolkien wrote his translation of Beowulf in 1926 and later made some revisions, but his work has never been published until now.  Editor Christoper Tolkien has added some of his fathers 1930s Oxford lectures on Beowulf as commentary, as well as his father’s “Sellic Spell”.  Find more information here.

Why I Want to Read It: I have been waiting for years for an announcement about Tolkien’s Beowulf and suddenly it arrived–not that Christopher Tolkien was working on it, but that it will be available for purchase come May!  Though Tolkien is known chiefly for creating Middle-earth, his other works are just as moving, magical, and imaginative.  I love his translation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and expect this translation to be just as masterful.