The only known manuscript of Beowulf was damaged in a library fire in 1731 [0]. Lost in that fire was the only known manuscript of the Saxon poem The Battle of

The only known manuscript of Beowulf was damaged in a library fire in 1731 [0]. Lost in that fire was the only known manuscript of the Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon [1]. The poem itself was preserved via a translation done c. 1724, but the original text was lost. An original transcription was subsequently discovered in the 1930s, so we still have access to the words, just not the original artifact. [2] This very same library is home to the only known manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight [3]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_library#Ashburnham_House_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_library#Ashburnham_Hous... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Maldon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Maldon [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Maldon#History_of_the_text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Maldon#History_o... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Gawain_and_the_Green_Knight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Gawain_and_the_Green_Knigh...