What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s posthumously published translation of the medieval poem Beowulf?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s posthumously published translation was titled Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary.

The book was edited by Tolkien’s son Christopher and published in 2014. It combines Tolkien’s prose translation of the Old English poem with commentary based on his lectures and teaching materials. The volume also includes “Sellic Spell,” a related work that presents a version of the story in a more folktale-like form.

Tolkien had worked on Beowulf for decades and was one of the poem’s most important twentieth-century scholars. His 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” helped change how the poem was studied, especially by insisting that its dragons and other monsters were central to its artistic structure.

The title can be confused with Tolkien’s separate 1920s work “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.” That later dramatic text is inspired by Old English literature but is not his Beowulf translation.