J. R. R. Tolkien’s Soul’s Ward: A critical edition of his unpublished translation of the early Middle English homily Sawles Warde

Journal article

Amongst the myriad academic papers of J. R. R. Tolkien held at the Bodleian Library, there is a typescript of a translation of the early thirteenth-century Middle English prose homily Sawles Warde. This translation, titled by Tolkien Soul’s Ward, is the culmination of his extensive work studying and teaching this text and builds on a now-lost critical edition of the three medieval manuscript versions of Sawles Warde prepared by Tolkien. The publication of this translation allows for a clearer understanding of Tolkien’s knowledge and interpretation of Sawles Warde and can furthermore serve as a gateway to the medieval text for general readers, much as his other translations have done. In order to make the translation as accessible as possible to both Middle English specialists and a general audience, this critical edition of Soul’s Ward provides the history of the translation, a contextualization of Tolkien’s relationship with the Middle English texts and their language, the dating of Tolkien’s extant typescript and related manuscripts, and the final emended and annotated version of Soul’s Ward.

Authors: Cossio, A; Goering, N

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: The Review of English Studies
• Article number: hgag038
• Publication date: 2026-06-08
• DOI: 10.1093/res/hgag038
• EISSN: 1471-6968
• ISSN: 0034-6551
• Language: English