'A Firstbook of Old English' distills instructional materials developed through forty years of teaching this ancestral form of our language. Uniquely it is shaped by principles of second-language instruction without diluting philology of the past century and a half. The author's 'One Hundred Middle English Lyrics' earlier offered a unique and very successful teaching text. His most recent scholarly publication is 'The Earliest Irish and English Bookarts.' Robert Stevick is now Professor of English Emeritus, University of Washington.

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