Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment

Notes
Tolkien's contribution on pages ix-xliii is entitled Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of "Beowulf".

The 1st Edition of the translation was published in 1911. Later printings counted the 1950 Edition as the 3rd Impression.

Two impressions issued with this dustwrapper design:

3rd Impression 1950 - 2,497 copies
4th Impression 1954 - 2,383 copies

Two variants of the binding for the 3rd Impression have been seen - one with orange cloth over the boards and the other with brown textured paper.

3rd Impression copies bound in the brown textured paper style appear to be much less common that those in the orange cloth style. It may be that 240 additional copies located at the printers in 1954 were then bound in the brown textured style.

The 4th Impression was similar to the 3rd Impression - brown textured paper variant.

Copies of the 4th Impression were also distibuted in the United States by Macmillan. These have a Macmillan label added to the upper cover (below Tolkien's name) or the front free endpaper.

Tolkien's essay was reprinted in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983) as On Translating Beowulf.