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Beowulf
Beowulf
Aug 25, 2025 7:21 AM

Author:Petra Borner,Michael Alexander

Beowulf

Part of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, Beowulf is one of the classic books that influenced JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

'So the company of men led a careless life,

All was well with them: until One began

To encompass evil, an enemy from hell.

Grendel they called this cruel spirit...'

J.R.R. Tolkien spent much of his life studying, translating and teaching the great epic stories of northern Europe, filled with heroes, dragons, trolls, dwarves and magic. He was hugely influential for his advocacy of Beowulf as a great work of literature and, even if he had never written The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, would be recognised today as a significant figure in the rediscovery of these extraordinary tales.

Legends from the Ancient North brings together from Penguin Classics five of the key works behind Tolkien's fiction.They are startling, brutal, strange pieces of writing, with an elemental power brilliantly preserved in these translations.They plunge the reader into a world of treachery, quests, chivalry, trials of strength.They are the most ancient narratives that exist from northern Europe and bring us as near as we will ever get to the origins of the magical landscape of Middle-earth (Midgard) which Tolkien remade in the 20th century.

Reviews

One of the most influential intellectuals of our time

—— Observer

A remarkable evocation of another time and another frame of reference

—— Daily Telegraph

Julia Blackburn has an extraordinary talent for thinking herlsef into other worlds... Reading her book, you experience the uncanny sensation that you have somehow always known these places

—— Evening Standard

She wears her talents like a modern Renaissance woman with elegance and affable ease

—— The Times

A brilliant and very readable portrait of the mother-daughter relationship

—— Candis

Brown's winning debut teaches a hopeful truth: Sometimes, just as you're starting to drown, things fall back into place.

—— People

Part Desperate Housewives, part American Beauty - entirely gripping

—— Scarlet

A razor-sharp critique of the absurd expectations that, these days, have come to stand for ambition, "All We Ever Wanted Was Everything" is wrenching, riveting, and still manages to be great fun. This is a wise, intimate chronicle of one family's struggle to take off their masks and live in the place they most feared: the real, imperfect world

—— Meghan Daum, author of 'The Quality of Life Report'

Rarely does a first novelist write with such confidence and grace. 'All We Ever Wanted Was Everything' is a marvelous book

—— Ayelet Waldman, author of "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

Hill's taut prose exudes a constant darkness... you are left unsettled and haunted by the seeming inevitability of their troubled lives

—— Stylist

Taut, tense story, written with that unsparing economy which is such a feature of Hill's recent fiction

—— Matthew Dennison , The Times

The versatile Hill tells a perfectly judged story of people living hard, narrow lives

—— Observer

So well-written, so deeply imagined, that the reader will find delight even in the encircling gloom. Love may not conquer all, but Art can

—— Scotsman

[Hill] does what all good writers must set out to do: she made me read until I had the answer

—— M J Hyland , Guardian

Hill’s sparse style provides the perfect medium for exploring this family’s predicament

—— Matthew Dennison , The TImes

Hill does a wonderful job of evoking life in this enclosed community

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

A masterpiece of economy and control

—— Good Book Guide
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