Beowulf

Yes -- Tolkien made this prose translation for his own use and teaching rather than for publication. It was edited by Christopher Tolkien from his father's manuscripts and published posthumously in 2014.

A 1936 lecture by Tolkien arguing that Beowulf is a great poem precisely because of its monsters -- that the dragon and Grendel are not distractions from the poem's seriousness but the heart of it. The lecture is widely credited with transforming how scholars approach Beowulf.

A short original story by Tolkien reconstructing the hypothetical folk-tale he believed lay behind the Beowulf poem -- the purely narrative skeleton stripped of the poem's Christian and historical overlay.

It is accurate and illuminating but not the most accessible entry point. Tolkien's translation is dense and deliberately archaic. First-time readers may prefer Seamus Heaney's 1999 verse translation; Tolkien's is ideal as a companion or comparison.

Tolkien was an Old English scholar and taught the poem at Oxford for many years. His translation was a working scholarly document as much as a literary effort -- a basis for close reading rather than a public-facing literary version.