Beowulf and the Critics

Beowulf and the Critics is a scholarly book first published in 2002, edited by professor Michael D.C. Drout. It is the winner of the 2003 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies.

The book publishes the complete text of two versions of J.R.R. Tolkien's lecture series "Beowulf and the Critics", (of which the 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" is only a condensation,) provided with a copious amount of explanatory notes. Additionally, all the editorial emendations in the original manuscript are meticulously transcribed and presented in a separate chapter. The book as a whole displays a great devotion to Tolkien's text as well as a high expertise on the Beowulf scholarship.

A second edition was published in 2011, with revisions, more information on the texts, and newly found preparatory notes by Tolkien.