The ninety-six Anglo-Saxon riddles in the eleventh-century "Exeter Book" are poems of great charm, zest, and subtlety. This volume contains the author's translations of seventy-five riddles while a further sixteen are translated in the notes.
Kevin Crossley-Holland's deep interest in the early literature of north-west Europe is reflected in much of his writing. In addition to his Selected Poems and Moored Man, a cycle of North Norfolk poems with watercolours and etchings by Norman Ackroyd, he is the author of The Penguin Book of Norse Myths, while his anthology The Anglo-Saxon World contains his well-known translations of Beowulf and many of the shorter poems. His celebrated books for children, including the Arthur trilogy, Gatty's Tale and a retelling of Beowulf illustrated by Charles Keeping, have been translated into well over twenty languages. With the poet Lawrence Sail, Crossley-Holland has edited an colection of modern metaphorical riddles, The New Exeter Book of Riddles, and Light Unlocked, an anthology of Christmas Card poems. He is also the co-author with Ivan Cutting of The Wuffings, a play about Anglo-Saxon East Anglia, and the librettist for Nicola LeFanu of two operas based on medieval legends, The Green Children and The Wildman. Kevin Crossley-Holland is an Honorary Fellow of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, patron of the Society for Storytelling and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
