The Cambridge Old English Reader

Description

This reader remains the only major new reader of Old English prose and verse in the past forty years. The second edition is extensively revised throughout, with the addition of a new 'Beginning Old English' section for newcomers to the Old English language, along with a new extract from Beowulf. The fifty-seven individual texts include established favourites such as The Battle of Maldon and Wulfstan's Sermon of the Wolf, as well as others not otherwise readily available, such as an extract from Apollonius of Tyre. Modern English glosses for every prose-passage and poem are provided on the same page as the text, along with extensive notes. A succinct reference grammar is appended, along with guides to pronunciation and to grammatical terminology. A comprehensive glossary lists and analyses all the Old English words that occur in the book. Headnotes to each of the six text sections, and to every individual text, establish their literary and historical contexts, and illustrate the rich cultural variety of Anglo-Saxon England. This second edition is an accessible and scholarly introduction to Old English.

Richard Marsden is Emeritus Professor of Old English at the University of Nottingham. In addition to numerous articles on Old English literature and language and the history of the Latin Bible, he has published The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1995) and an edition of The Old English Heptateuch for the Early English Text Society (2008).

Review of previous edition: '... offering a bountiful assortment of diverse texts thoughtfully edited for basic students of Old English. The book seems to arise from a long and dedicated engagement with Old English pedagogy, and its sheer diversity and breadth of scope makes it likely that almost any teacher of Old English will find something in it of value ... The rich banquet found in the Cambridge [Old English] Reader would not easily be exhausted in a semester, or even a year-long course in Old English; it is sure to inspire in both students and teachers alike a fresh dedication to the work of understanding Anglo-Saxon England.' R. Liuzza, The Medieval Review Review of previous edition: 'Marsden admirably fulfils his task of providing a canon-expanding list of texts.' R. Boenig, Medievalia et Humanistica Review of previous edition: 'The selection of texts covers ground that no previous reader has approached. There are items that will be of interest to specialists in women's studies and cultural studies ... The reference grammar has the best presentation I have seen in a resource of this sort - the content is both comprehensive and concise; and the arrangement is logical and user-friendly. The headnotes are also outstanding ...' Paul Remley, University of Washington, Seattle Review of previous edition: 'Marsden has done a masterful job of glossing and annotating the texts in the Reader ... he gets the level of annotation just right for a university-level student of the subject. I admire his headnotes very much for the amount of material he manages to convey in a relatively short space ... I think that this book will be very easy to teach from. The number of texts that he offers in the book is remarkable and admirable ... in addition, the careful level of glossing and annotation of some difficult texts means that a teacher can assign a much wider range of texts than usual in an introductory course ...' Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe, University of Notre Dame Review of previous edition: 'Marsden's Reader is traditional ... The preliminaries offer sensible and succinct observations on such matters a as punctuation, spelling variation, and emendation (admirably kept to a minimum except for the Colloquy) ... [His] convenient and thought-provoking rough categorization brings to the front of his reader two groupings that could prompt teachers of Old English to think out their courses anew.' English Language and Linguistics '... this remains an invaluable reader ...' A. P. Church, Choice 'Of the hundreds of textbooks on Old English proffered in the past 300 years, Marsden's Cambridge Old English Reader, Second Edition, earns its rightful rating as superb.' Robert Graybill, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching