Legends from the Ancient North brings together some of the magical texts that most influenced J.R.R Tolkien, and the re-packaged books have been slashed in price and given new jackets to be published before “The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug” comes out in cinemas.

The five titles include Beowulf, The Saga of the Volsungs, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Elder Edda and The Wanderer.

Publishing director Simon Winder said: "Tolkien was professor of Anglo Saxon for many years at Oxford so he knew all of these inside out and was fascinated by them."

Each of the five books from the Legends from the Ancient North series will be given new designs, courtesy of artist Petra Borner. The covers have been reworked graphically, and given an infusion of color, with each cover featuring a hero or creature mentioned within the book itself.

Penguin will be releasing the redesigned books in November later this year. 

Beowulf tells the epic story of the heroic Beowulf and his battles, first against the monster Grendel, who laid waste to the castle of the Danish king Hrothgar, then with Grendel's avenging mother, and finally with a dragon that threatens to devastate his homeland.

J.R.R. Tolkien spent much of his life studying, translating and teaching the great epic stories of northern Europe, filled with heroes, dragons, trolls, dwarves and magic. He was hugely influential for his advocacy of Beowulf as a great work of literature and, even if he had never written The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, would be recognised today as a significant figure in the rediscovery of these extraordinary tales.

Based on Viking Age poems and composed in thirteenth-century Iceland, The Saga of the Volsungscombines mythology, legend, and sheer human drama in telling of the heroic deeds of Sigurd the dragon slayer, who acquires runic knowledge from one of Odin's Valkyries. Yet the saga is set in a very human world, incorporating oral memories of the fourth and fifth centuries, when Attila the Hun and other warriors fought on the northern frontiers of the Roman empire.

In his illuminating introduction Jesse L. Byock links the historical Huns, Burgundians, and Goths with the extraordinary events of this Icelandic saga. With its ill-fated Rhinegold, the sword reforged, and the magic ring of power, the saga resembles the Nibelungenlied and has been a primary source for such fantasy writers as J. R. R. Tolkien and for Richard Wagner's Ring cycle.

Composed in the fourteenth century, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is as beloved as it is venerable, combining the hallmarks of medieval romance—pageantry, chivalry, and courtly love—with the charm of fairy tales and heroic sagas. When a mysterious green knight rides on horseback into King Arthur’s court, interrupting a New Year’s feast, he issues a challenge: if any of King Arthur’s men can behead him and he survives, then a year later he is entitled to return the strike.

Sir Gawain takes up the challenge and decapitates the green knight, only to see him pick up his severed head and ride away, leaving Gawain to seek him out to fulfill their pact. Blending Celtic myth and Christian faith, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a Middle English masterpiece of magic, chivalry, and seduction.

Compiled by an unknown scribe in Iceland around 1270, and based on sources dating centuries earlier, the heroic poems of The Elder Edda tell of gods and mortals from an ancient era: the giant-slaying Thor, the doomed Völsung family, the Hell-ride of Brynhild, and the cruelty of Atli the Hun.

Eclectic and fragmented, these verses nevertheless retain their stark beauty and power to enthrall, opening a window on to the thoughts, beliefs and hopes of the Vikings and their world.

In this collection of the earliest verse in English, heroic poems celebrate the courage, loyalty, and strength of the ancient world: in "The Battle of Maldon" a brave Anglo-Saxon army attempt to fend off a Viking invasion; "The Wanderer" and "The Seafarer" reflect on exile, loss and destiny; and The Exeter Riddles are witty linguistic puzzles that directly influenced Golum's famous riddles in Tolkien's The Hobbit.