This work represents the first comprehensive treatment of Norse mythology in English. The latter half of the eighteenth century saw the rise on the European literary scene of an immense cultural interest in the myths and legends of the Nordic world, which resonated with the emerging trends of Romanticism and the Gothic. In 1755 the Swiss scholar Paul Henri Mallet (1730-1807), tutor to the Danish King Christian VII, had published his Introduction à l'histoire de Dannemarc, a study of Danish history and antiquities. Mallet's work included a large amount of detail on pre-Christian Scandinavian myth and legend drawn from surviving medieval Icelandic texts such as the Poetic Edda and the writings of Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241). The book was an immediate success and became hugely popular.

This English translation, itself a heavily edited version of Mallet's original, was undertaken by the clergyman and ballad-collector Thomas Percy (1729-1811). Percy was very well connected both at court (he was for a while chaplain to George III) and in the literary circles of his day. As well as being closely associated with writers such as Samuel Johnson and David Hume, he was a close friend of the poet Thomas Gray (1716-71), who himself had published several verse translations of Norse poems earlier in the 1760s. Percy's publication of his Northern Antiquities at the end of the decade was also intended to capitalise on the market for 'ancient poetry' which had been opened up by the appearance in print, from 1761 onwards, of James MacPherson's Ossian poems.

Percy is perhaps best known for his collection of ballads, the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, published in 1765. This work cemented his reputation and went on to inspire a generation of writers and poets including William Blake, William Wordsworth and Walter Scott, amongst others. Given the Prince of Wales's keen interest in the prevailing literary fashions of the day, it is not at all surprising to find a book such as this in his personal library, for which it was rebound with the Prince's three feathers crest stamped on the spine. It would also seem likely that it was read, too, at least given the presence of various doodles which appear on blank pages towards the back of the book.