1570), a pioneer of the study of Old English, who inscribed his name (dated 1563) at the top of the manuscript’s first page. The first-recorded owner of Beowulf is Laurence Nowell (died c. These comprise a homily on St Christopher The Marvels of the East (also known as The Wonders of the East), illustrated with wondrous beasts and deformed monsters the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle and an imperfect copy of another Old English poem, Judith.īeowulf is the penultimate item in this collection, the whole of which was copied by two Anglo-Saxon scribes, working in collaboration. Nobody knows for certain when the poem was first composed.Īpart from Beowulf, the manuscript contains several other medieval texts. The most likely time for Beowulf to have been copied is the early 11th century, which makes the manuscript approximately 1,000 years old. Some scholars have suggested that the manuscript was made at the end of the 10th century, others in the early decades of the 11th, perhaps as late as the reign of King Cnut, who ruled England from 1016 until 1035. The manuscript bears no date, and so its age has to be calculated by analysing the scribes’ handwriting. More than 3,000 lines long, Beowulf relates the exploits of its eponymous hero, and his successive battles with a monster named Grendel, with Grendel’s revengeful mother, and with a dragon which was guarding a hoard of treasure.īeowulf survives in a single medieval manuscript. Beowulf is the longest epic poem in Old English, the language spoken in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest.
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