Thorkelin Transcripts
For an introduction, a comprehensive collation, and a preliminary analysis of these indispensable copies of Beowulf before fire-damage severely harmed the manuscript, see The Thorkelin Transcripts of Beowulf (Copenhagen 1986).
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Thorkelin A
Thorkelin A does not reproduce the Beowulf MS page by page and line by line, making it difficult to collate with either the manuscript or Thorkelin B.
In 1983, to facilitate collations by scholars, the Royal Library added the MS foliation in pencil to the margins of Thorkelin A (Conybeare and Madden use the MS foliation too).
Thorkelin A began proofreading his work and made some interlinear corrections, but there is evidence that he never completed proofreading.
Thorkelin A's skill in copying insular script improved radically in the course of his work, and it is usually easy to detect later additions and corrections by him.
Thorkelin B
Thorkelin's own transcript presents many difficulties, in part because he had Thorkelin A to consult as he made the second transcript, in part because Thorkelin was devising a first edition and Latin translation.
Thorkelin began but later erased an interlinear Latin translation in A (pp. 2-6). His occasional dependence on A in later proofreading, rather than on the manuscript, is here evident in his transcript of fol. 130r17, where he begins to omit the same line as A.
Thorkelin B is at its best when A does not provide readings, either on purpose or by accident. Here B alone attests to the ð in bið 198v17 (original d crossed later, however) and to the rare macron over g in freoge 198v18 (erroneously expanded to freogen).