Akademik

   The sole manuscript containing the Old English epic poem BEOWULF is the British Museum manuscript Cotton Vitellius A.xv. It is thus designated because it was from the collection of the antiquarian Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571–1631), and was found in the bookshelf beneath a bust of the Roman emperor Vitellius. It was the 15th book on the first shelf, hence “A.xv.”

   Nearly all of the approximately 30,000 lines of Old English poetry survive in four manuscripts (the EXETER BOOK, the JUNIUSMANUSCRIPT, and the VERCELLI BOOK are the other three). In addition to Beowulf, the Cotton manuscript contains the Old English poem JUDITH and some prose works. The manuscript was donated to the English people along with the rest of Cotton’s collection in 1700. It was moved shortly thereafter because of the deterioration of Cotton’s estate, and barely escaped disaster when it was tossed from a window when its new home, Ashburnham House in Westminster, caught fire in 1731. The fire did damage the edges of the manuscript, however, and some passages of the texts were lost. The Cotton collection was moved to the British Museum after the fire, where it still resides. The manuscript was rebound in 1845 with paper frames added in an attempt to slow the deterioration of the fire-damaged vellum pages. Scholars generally agree that the Cotton Vitellius A.xv manuscript was produced roughly in the year 1000, and in Wessex. It is likely, however, that Beowulf was written much earlier (most scholars favor the eighth century, but other guesses range into the 10th) and probably in Mercia or Northumberland.

   Bibliography

   ■ Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. Edited by Friedrich Klaeber. 2nd ed. Boston: Heath, 1950.

   ■ Beowulf: A Verse Translation. Translated by Seamus Heaney. Edited by Daniel Donoghue. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton: 2001.