Troy type. Edition limited to 300 copies on paper and eight on vellum.
Second edition. The Tale of Beowulf, Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats, translated by William Morris and A. J. Wyatt. London and New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1895. 8o, pp. x, 191.
Ninth English Translation. Imitative Measures.
Differences between the First and Second Editions.
In the second edition a title-page is added. The running commentary, printed in rubric on the margin of the first edition, is omitted.
Text Used.
The translation is, in general, conformed to Wyatt’s text of 1894, departing from it in only a few unimportant details.
Part Taken in the Work by Morris and Wyatt respectively.
The matter is fortunately made perfectly clear in Mackail’s Life of William Morris, vol. ii. p. 284:—
‘(Morris) was not an Anglo-Saxon scholar, and to help him in following the original, he used the aid of a prose translation made for him by Mr. A. J. Wyatt, of Christ’s College, Cambridge, with whom he had also read through the original. The plan of their joint labours had been settled in the autumn of 1892. Mr. Wyatt began to supply Morris with his prose paraphrase in February, 1893, and he at once began to “rhyme up,” as he said, “very eager to be at it, finding it the most delightful work.” He was working at it all through the year, and used to read it to Burne-Jones regularly on Sunday mornings in summer.’