In the years since it was first published in 2011, Jane Draycott’s translation of the medieval English poem Pearl has been recognised as a classic. David Morley declared in Poetry Review, ‘The language is marvellously modulated yet stirringly wild. Draycott has carried over into our tamer, tired world a strong, strange sense of how original, gorgeous and natural this old poem can be.’ In the Times Literary Supplement Lachlan Mackinnin wrote, ‘Draycott’s version is compellingly human.’ It is appropriate, given the delicacy of language and theme, that this should be the first major translation prepared by a woman.

In a dream landscape radiant with jewels, a father sees his lost daughter on the far bank of a river: ‘my pearl, my girl’. One of the great treasures of the British Library, the fourteenth-century poem Pearl is a work of poetic brilliance. Its account of loss and consolation retains its force across six centuries.