Collector's slipcased edition of the first ever standalone presentation of one of J.R.R.
Tolkien's most important poetic dramas that explores timely themes such as the nature of
heroism and chivalry during war and which features unpublished and never-before-seen texts and
drafts. In 991 AD vikings attacked an Anglo-Saxon defence-force led by their duke Beorhtnoth
resulting in brutal fighting along the river Blackwater near Maldon in Essex. The attack is
widely considered one of the defining conflicts of tenth-century England and is immortalised
in the poem The Battle of Maldon . Written shortly after the battle the poem survives only as
a 325-line fragment but its value to today is incalculable. J.R.R. Tolkien considered The
Battle of Maldon 'the last surviving fragment of ancient English heroic minstrelsy'. It would
inspire him to compose during the 1930s his own dramatic verse-dialogue The Homecoming of
Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son which imagines the aftermath of the great battle when two of
Beorhtnoth's retainers come to retrieve their duke's body. Leading Tolkien scholar Peter
Grybauskas presents for the first time Tolkien's own prose translation of The Battle of Maldon
together with the definitive treatment of The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth and its accompanying
essays also included and never before published is the lecture 'The Tradition of
Versification in Old English'. Illuminated with insightful notes and commentary he offers a
definitive critical edition of these works and argues compellingly that Beowulf excepted The
Battle of Maldon may well have been 'the Old English poem that most influenced Tolkien's
fiction' most dramatically within the pages of The Lord of the Rings . This slipcased edition
includes a colour frontispiece reproducing a page of Tolkien's original manuscript of The
Homecoming and is printed on acid-free paper with a ribbon marker. It is quarterbound with a
unique illustration by Bill Sanderson gold-foiled on grey boards and is housed in a
custom-built slipcase. It also includes a digitally remastered recording of The Homecoming of
Beorhtnoth read by J.R.R. Tolkien & Christopher Tolkien which is available on CD for the first
time.
