‘The Course Least Likely to Attract Sceptical Officialdom’: Archiving The Battle of Maldon and the Poetry and Boats of Bill Griffiths

Abstract Bill Griffiths (1948–2007) was a poet, publisher, activist and researcher of languages and local history whose creative and scholarly practices frequently drew on the early medieval past. As an early ‘creative critic’, Griffiths is an important case study for an examination of how Old English studies has developed in its attitudes towards research that takes place without, but encounters, the academy. This article focuses on Griffiths’ edition and translation of The Battle of Maldon (1991). Griffiths published many translations of Old English prose and poetry, but his Maldon is a key text because it was one of only a few works by Griffiths to be reviewed in an academic journal. That review, by Donald Scragg, was not favourable, but it did inspire Griffiths to enter a new period of creative medieval work. By examining Griffiths’ medievalist writings from the time of his Maldon, this article reveals that Griffiths’ relationship with that Old English poem was motivated by his investment in Essex and the North Sea coast as a poet and bookmaker. At the time he was working on his Maldon, Griffiths not only ‘sailed’ a boat from London to the Thames estuary but lost another houseboat in an accidental fire that destroyed many of his papers. These events would also shape his edition and translation of the Old English poem. A reappraisal of Griffiths’ works now can mark a turn towards reassessing the place of contemporary poetry and non-institutional research in the histories of Old English poems and their editions.