King Arthur and His Knights: Selected Tales

Thomas Malory, knight, adventurer, and soldier, was born in the early years of the fifteenth century and died on March 14, 1471, having spent much of the last twenty years of his life in prison.

It was there that he wrote most, if not all, of his works, completing the last in about 1470. Some fifteen years later William Caxton published the entire collection of his tales in one volume, Le Morte Darthur.

With the exception of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Le Morte Darthur has captured the imagination of the modern reader more than any other book from the Middle Ages. In great measure English Arthurian fiction is directly attributable to Malory’s tales.

King Arthur and His Knights is a thoroughly readable (spelling has been normalised; footnotes are provided for archaic words), accurate rendering of Malory’s famous stories of King Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Gawain, and the Holy Grail. It includes the familiar legends, plots, exploits, and characters which have become part of the cultural tradition of the English-speaking world.

Compiled and edited with an extensive introduction by Eúgène Vinaver, the foremost Malory scholar in the world, King Arthur and His Knights is an ideal edition for use by Medievalists, students of Arthurian literature, and those who are stirred by chivalry and deeds of daring; Eugène Vinaver was Professor of Romance Languages at Northwestern University and was affiliated with the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, Canada. He wrote a host of books including Malory and The Rise of Romance. He was also the editor of the three-volume standard edition of The Works of Sir Thomas Malory.