Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg

Edited, with introduction, bibliography, notes, glossary, and appendices, by Fr. Klaeber. Third edition with first and second supplements. First published in 1950. Frederick Klaeber’s edition of 'Beowulf' was indisputably the most influential edition of the poem of the twentieth century. First published in 1922, with a second edition coming in 1928 and a third in 1936, followed by reprints of the third edition with 'supplements' in 1941 and 1950, Klaeber’s 'Beowulf' represents one of the pinnacles of Germanic philological endeavour, extraordinary in the depth and breadth of its learning and unmatched in its scholarly authority. The achievement of the later editions was all the more remarkable given the fact that Klaeber had retired back to Germany from his University of Minnesota chair in 1931 and worked in extremely arduous circumstances in the subsequent traumatic period and after the war, in what had by then become the German Democratic Republic. The third edition with supplements of 1950 became the standard edition of the poem in the second half of the twentieth century, being the scholarly sine qua non of 'Beowulf' studies and the text of choice for 'Beowulf' teachers, particularly but by no means only in North America. Klaeber’s glossary alone, fully parsing and comprehensive in citation, has been a major resource for students both beginning and advanced.