Online Resources
The Digitised Manuscripts website of the British Library has high-resolution digital images of BL MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv. Students of Beowulf should note that its folios are identified by an 1884 foliation that differs from an earlier and more important foliation written on the manuscript. The major editions of Beowulf and knowledgeable scholars adhere to this manuscript foliation, which appears throughout the composite codex. Electronic Beowulf uses the manuscript foliation, but places the 1884 numbers in parentheses for reference.
The International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England (ISSEME) is now the organization of record for the history, art, archaeology, literature, languages, religion, society, and numismatics of England between the years c. 450 and 1100 CE. The Society mounts a valuable list of online resources, including the OEN Bibliography Database.
Under the direction of editors Robert Getz and Stephen Pelle, the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto continues preparing The Dictionary of Old English, a monumental lexicon of the first 600 years of the English language. As of March 2026, the project had nearly completed fascicles A-L, and was making progress on fascicle M. The DOE and DOE Corpus are available by institutional or individual subscription.
Charles University in Prague hosts word searches of the still indispensable nineteenth-century Bosworth-Toller Dictionary, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth ... Edited and Enlarged by T. Northcote Toller (Oxford, 1882-98) and the Supplement by T. Northcote Toller (Oxford, 1921).
For comprehensive online research, the Electronic Beowulf website offers full-page images of both volumes of the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary and Supplement. The interface features a medieval alphabet providing quick access to page ranges and a button for high-resolution study.
Araby Greene's Resources for the Study of Beowulf offers general readers, students, and scholars a carefully compiled, well-organized, and continually maintained gateway to Beowulf studies.
In addition to the visible images of BL Cotton Vitellius A. xv, the Electronic Beowulf reveals more than 1300 invisible readings hidden behind the nineteenth-century protective paper frames. It also includes ultraviolet images clarifying erased readings. More critically, ultraviolet discloses the effects of an eleventh-century palimpsest and the modern use of chemicals on the manuscript.