MICEL FOLCLAND BIBLIOGRAPHY VIIIb

Working on a new version of the bibliography and sharing it here. These books are recommended—or warned against—by members of the group and other medievalists. Please write with any additions you suggest!

Nicol, Alexandra (editor). Domesday Book: Facsimiles with Introduction
Complete translation of the Domesday Book, William’s detailed list of the farms and goods of England, which owed as much to Anglo-Saxon as to Norman England.

Pollington, Stephen. Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plant-Lore and Healing
Essays and translations of Old English leechbooks. The subject of medicine in the early middle ages is fascinating, often misunderstood and a fun subject. Imedicine of the period can be a combination of the humorous, the gross, the superstitious and the practical, and Pollington provides as usual a great overview, with not enough illustrations but a number of modern translations of period works.

Ross, James B. & Mary M. McLaughlin (eds.). The Portable Medieval Reader
A rich and varied collection of period writings.

Swanton, Michael (trans). Anglo-Saxon Prose Swanton (Everyman Paperback Classics)
A collection of prose work from Old English.

Theophilis. On Diverse Arts
Has done great things for numerous people in metalworking and such.

Thorsson, Ornolfur (ed.). The Sagas of the Icelanders
A collection of translations by various persons of sagas and þaettir, with valuable notes and appendixes. The sagas are indispensable reading, and this is a rich and meaty collection. The names of the actual editors are hidden, and the name of novelist Jane Smiley—the author of the depressing The Greenlanders and author of the preface—is displayed more prominently than the name of the editor.

Tolkien, J. R. R, and Peter Grybauskas. The Battle of Maldon: Together with the Homecoming of Beorhtnoth

The first-ever standalone edition of one of Tolkien’s most important poetic dramas. 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 very first time J.R.R. Tolkien’s own prose translation. Grybauskas includes Tolkien’s lecture, “The Tradition of Versification in Old English,” and he argues that, Beowulf excepted, The Battle of Maldon may well have been “the Old English poem that most influenced his fiction,” most dramatically The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien, J. R. R., and Christopher Tolkien. Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary.
A prose translation of something that long intrigued Tolkien. Includes a translation of “Selling Spell” and some additional poetry from the Beowulf translation.

Whitelock, Dorothy (trans.). Anglo-Saxon Wills
Wills are often the best judge of everday life since the things passed down are often objects from everyday life.