The Conybeare-Madden Collation of Thorkelin’s Beowulf

In 1817 John Josias Conybeare, Rawlinson Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University from 1808-1812, and Professor of Poetry thereafter, was presented with G. J. Thorkelin’s 1815 first edition of Beowulf by his brother, William. It may seem like a fine gift today, but by his own account it led to three years of tedium between 1817-1821, when he arduously compiled the first detailed account of the Beowulf manuscript after the Thorkelin transcripts by collating the edition with the original manuscript in the British Museum. An intriguing relationship underlying the history of Conybeare’s collation flourished in the last six months of his life between Conybeare and the young Frederic Madden, who became an employee of British Museum in 1828 and later was its long-time Keeper of Manuscripts. Under the circumstances it is not too far-fetched to imagine that Conybeare, apparently busy with other wide-ranging projects, befriended Madden at this time for the express purpose of hiring him to undertake proofreading for him.