Although this book examines the historical contexts of the Old English poem Beowulf from a variety of perspectives, it is directed not toward historians (although they are surely part of the book’s broader audience) but primarily toward students and scholars of Beowulf. The arguments of the book are presented in a very readable, accessible style, so it is also directed toward a general audience that is interested in either Beowulf or early Scandinavian history, or both.[...]Tolkien presented his British Academy lecture as a correction of what he saw as an over-emphasis on legendary history to the detriment of the poem as poem. Perhaps, if we are fortunate, Shippey’s book will contribute to a similar correction and return the historical dimensions of the poem to the center of our critical concerns. To this end, he explores these dimensions from as many perspectives as possible.

This is a short book about the poem Beowulf, aimed at demonstrating that it was composed in the context of remembered historical people and events, even if the main story is fiction. The book consists of four chapters and an introduction, written in a vigorous and readable style [...] for a nonspecialist audience. The author succeeds in establishing that perceptions of an earlier history of dynastic conflicts provided a background to the main story.

[Shippey asks] why the poem was written in England but set in Scandinavia. Is it a piece of propaganda? An elaborate school text to teach children Old English? Most fascinating, Shippey points to families in the northeast of England, where the poem may have been written, who for generations “named their sons in memory of Geatish royals, using names which rarely if ever show up anywhere else.”

By the end of Shippey’s small book, though, the reader is so awash with his enthusiastic suppositions, his tables and dates and lineages (including the lineage of Beowulf scholars themselves, before and after Tolkien, and Shippey’s own teachers), that we are left in the mood for poetry again.