Layamon's Arthur: The Arthurian Section of Layamon's Brut (lines 9229–14297). Edited and translated by W. R. J. Barron and S. C. Weinberg. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2001. Pp. lxxi + 290. $24.95; £14.99 (paper).

The Owl and the Nightingale: Text and Translation. Edited and translated by Neil Cartlidge. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2001. Pp. liv + 202. $24.95; £14.99 (paper).

It is a notable coincidence that Exeter University Press should have published within a month or so of each other editions of two of the most celebrated early Middle English poems, both extant in two manuscripts only and both featuring in the early thirteenth-century manuscript London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A.ix. Layamon's Brut is a verse translation of Wace's Anglo-Norman Roman de Brut, itself a verse translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. The Brut is known chiefly for being the first text in English to recount the reign of King Arthur, though the work spans the entire period between the arrival in Britain of the legendary hero Brutus, founder of the British nation, to the last British (i.e., Celtic) king to hold sovereignty over the island: hence an edition comprising only the 5,000-odd lines of the Arthurian section. This is an already well established textbook, having first been published in 1989 by Longman; it has undergone over the years a number of revisions reflecting the growth in interest in Layamon, and the current volume is the latest in date of these.

François Le Saux
University of Reading