Caedmon's Hymn is a central poem in many crucial debates in Anglo-Saxon studies. It is the earliest attested Old English verse text, our best-documented example of ostensibly oral composition, and the only surviving poem for which a contemporary record exists of its reception. The most textually complex poem in the corpus, the Hymn long has served as an important test case for textual scholars. This book is an essential resource for students of Caedmon's Hymn. It provides the first comprehensive literary and historical re-examination of the poem in over thirty years and the first complete textual study and edition in nearly seventy. The book radically revises our understanding of the Hymn's transmission and challenges assumptions about its place in Anglo-Saxon poetic history. It offers new critical texts and a textual archive with transcriptions and facsimiles of all medieval witnesses. The edition is also a milestone in the integration of digital and print scholarship. A print volume, designed for ready reference, contains the complete introductory study and essential versions of the critical and diplomatic texts; the accompanying CD-ROM, intended for closer research, supplements the text of the print volume with colour digital facsimiles and interactive tools only possible in the electronic medium.

Dr Daniel Paul O'Donnell [University of Lethbridge] has written widely on the transmission and reception of medieval vernacular literature and humanities computing. He is the founding director of the Digital Medievalist Project .