This reader remains the only major new reader of Old English prose and verse in the past forty years. The second edition has been extensively revised, with the new section, Beginning Old English, for newcomers to Old English, along with a new extract from Beowulf. The 57 individual texts include favourites such as The Battle of Maldon and Sermon of the Wolf, and others not readily available, like an extract from Apollonius of Tyre. There are Modern English glosses for every prose-passage and poem and extensive notes. A succinct reference grammar is appended, along with a guide to pronunciation and grammatical terminology. The glossary lists and analyses all Old English words that occur in the book. Headnotes to each of the six text sections, and to every individual text, establish their literary and historical contexts, illustrating the rich cultural variety of Anglo-Saxon England. This second edition is an accessible and scholarly introduction to Old English.