The edition I have is a modern English translation. The translator was John McNamara, not Friedrich Klaeber, the person that I had mistakenly listed in my last message. (whose text the translation is based on). Your
Beowulf in the original Old English is probably a much rarer and more valuable book for collectors. I haven't read mine yet, but I think it is good for general readers and students who don't know any Anglo Saxon. The translator seems to have been a good OE scholar. Anyway, this was quite a good deal for a bargain book.
I wondered if colleges and universities actually offer courses in Anglo Saxon so that students can read Beowulf in the original. They don't in my country (at least they didn't when I was in college many years ago), but perhaps they do in England where the poem is studied in more depth in its original language. Most colleges and universities here in the U. S. don't require students to read
The Illiad and
The Odyssey in original Greek, either. I guess we received our classics second hand, which may not be as good, but at least we read them.
Larry W.