The Earliest English Poems

Nov 28, 2025 12:52 AM

Author:Michael Alexander

Anglo-Saxon poetry was produced between 700 and 1000 AD for an audience that delighted in technical accomplishment, and the durable works of Old English verse spring from the source of the English language.

Michael Alexander has translated the best of the Old English poetry into modern English and into a verse form that retains the qualities of Anglo-Saxon metre and alliteration. Included in this selection are the ‘heroic poems’ such as Widsith, Deor, Brunanburh and Maldon, and passages from Beowulf; some of the famous ‘riddles’ from The Exeter Book; all the ‘elegies’, including The Ruin, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife’s Complaint and The Husband’s Message, in which the virtu of Old English is found in its purest and most concentrated form; together with the great Christian poem The Dream of the Rood.

Reviews

Alice Hoffman is erotic and romantic, funny and clever and humane

—— The Times

Alice Hoffman is a daring and able writer; she plots conjunctions of mundane and magical events with such ease that the reader never doubts her word

—— New Yorker

Like her contemporaries, Carol Shields and Alice Munro, Hoffman has an acute eye for detail - Hoffman writes with heartbreaking clarity

—— The Times

[Hoffman] does it beautifully, composing a lyrical tale that does not waster a single word, a shamelessly heart-breaking story that will leave barely a dry eye in the house

—— Lesley McDowell , Independent on Sunday

Enchanting

—— Sunday Times

It's easy to get absorbed in this novel...Life is not like this, but would it be such a bad thing if there were a it more magic in the world?

—— Daily Telegraph

Hoffman delivers one of the best plot twists I can remember

—— Observer

Hoffman is a skilled and experienced writer... beautifully constructed

—— Guardian

A strangely provocative, grown-up fairy fable

—— Good Housekeeping

Cuts deeply into the griefs and passions that shape us all and into heartbreaking secrets

—— The Times

Emotionally compelling

—— Psychologies Magazine

Hoffman writes as beautifully as ever

—— Marie Claire

Hoffman knows that good fairytales, like people, are never simple

—— Herald

Beautifully written, mystical and intriguing, this is a story of life, death, love and second chances. Enthralling

—— Woman and Home

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