New English undergraduate students have been left struggling to find one of their key set texts following a last-minute change to the edition required by the English Faculty.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a set text, used for compulsory translation questions in both the Preliminary and Part I examinations. Up until this term, the set edition used for these questions was a J.R.R. Tolkien-edited edition.

Although the Tolkien-edited edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was included on reading list sent out to new students in August, students were notified at the end of September, a few days before arriving in Cambridge, that they were now required to use a Penguin version of the text.

However, when students attempted to buy the new set edition, they found that it was often unavailable in bookshops. Issues with supplies have also left most college libraries without the required edition of Sir Gawain. An email from the English Faculty to students on the 4th October said that “this edition is proving hard to get hold of this month and there are not many copies around Cambridge.”

Speaking to Varsity, Professor Peter De Bolla, chair of the faculty, explained that the issues had not been anticipated: “This is a Penguin edition, so we might have been forgiven for assuming that it would be available. However, there has clearly been such wide demand for it across the country that their print run has been exceeded. Heffers [bookshop, on Trinity Street] say that it will be in stock again later in the autumn.”

He said that the edition had been changed because the previous set edition had become “very old indeed”, with critical comments that were “extremely dated”. The new Penguin edition, he said, was “more user-friendly”.

De Bolla said that the faculty library had “taken steps to remedy the situation”: “They checked our supplies, ordered some more copies, put several on short loan and immediately got in touch with our colleagues in the colleges.”

He added: “The college library representative for English who works closely with the Faculty Library immediately phoned Heffers to alert them to the fact that they needed to order in copies of this text as the colleges and students would be no doubt be after the copies.

“We think that the Faculty Library is at least as well stocked with copies as we would normally be and we have moved some more to short loan and put one on reference only. The Library is also checking again for electronic copies as well.”

Scanned copies of required passages have been put online for English students to access.

One Fitzwilliam English fresher, who had purchased a copy of the previous set edition before the change was announced, told Varsity that “it’s a shame they told us so late, especially given the previous edition was already expensive and difficult to get hold of.”

They continued, “It felt like an unnecessary change, and even our lecturer admitted that it made little difference.”

A second fresher branded the change as “ridiculous”: “They must have known in advance they were planning to change it, so why only tell us the day before arrival?”