Collector-s slipcased edition of the first ever standalone presentation of one of J.R.R. Tolkien-s most important poetic dramas, that explores timely themes such as the nature of heroism and chivalry during war, and which features unpublished and never-before-seen texts and drafts.In 991 AD, vikings attacked an Anglo-Saxon defence-force led by their duke, Beorhtnoth, resulting in brutal fighting along the river Blackwater, near Maldon in Essex. The attack is widely considered one of the defining conflicts of tenth-century England, and is immortalised in the poem, The Battle of Maldon.Written shortly after the battle, the poem survives only as a 325-line fragment, but its value to today is incalculable. J.R.R. Tolkien considered The Battle of Maldon -the last surviving fragment of ancient English heroic minstrelsy-. It would inspire him to compose, during the 1930s, his own dramatic verse-dialogue, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm-s Son, which imagines the aftermath of the great
