The Anglo-Saxon Elegies

This bilingual gathering presents Old English lyric poems, mainly from the Exeter Book, with facing modern English. Typical speakers are an exile without a lord, a seafarer torn between voyage and hall, a woman parted from a husband or lover, and a wanderer looking at a ruined stone-built town. Recurring subjects are winter weather, the gift-throne, the sea, and the shortness of earthly joy. Related pieces treat displacement as a condition that can be named and endured. There is no single narrative. The volume is a short anthology of elegy, not a history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and not a heroic epic of the Beowulf type.

Quarter-bound in dark brown moire silk with marbled paper covers, spine and cover labels. Glassine cover, no slipcase but.