For over seventy years there has been no new English edition of the lively and vigorously-written Middle English verse romance of Hauelok, despite the need for a text to meet modern standards of editing. In this new and thorough edition of the poem. Professor Smithers has done much to elucidate the text, providing a detailed glossary, textual notes, and an introduction that contains an account of the main manuscript and of the Cambridge fragments, of the relations of Hauelok to the other main versions of the story, and of the language, the sources, the date of composition. In addition, Smithers supplies a full commentary which goes well beyond those of previous editions in range, scale, and detail.
