Which scholar published the first complete printed edition of the Old English epic Beowulf in 1815?

Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin published the first complete printed edition of the Old English epic Beowulf in 1815.

Thorkelin was an Icelandic-Danish scholar and archivist who became interested in Beowulf while working in Denmark. He produced two handwritten transcripts of the unique surviving manuscript, one in 1786 and another in 1791, before preparing a Latin edition.

His edition appeared in Copenhagen in 1815 under the title De Danorum rebus gestis secul. III et IV. Poëma Danicum dialecto Anglosaxonica. It included the Old English text and a Latin translation, making Beowulf available in printed form to a wider scholarly audience.

Thorkelin’s work predates modern translations and interpretations by more than a century. The manuscript itself is now known as the Nowell Codex, and it remains the only surviving manuscript containing the complete poem. The 1815 edition is important historically, although later scholars identified transcription and printing errors in it.