Redactor's ForewordThe Morte Darthur was finished in the ninth year of Edward IV, on or about March 4, 1469. Thus, producing one of the last important English books written before the introduction of printing. No manuscript of it has been discovered. Caxton was not only the printer , but its editor as well. It is the first English classic for which we are entirely dependent on the printed text of the Editor. Caxton also divided Malory's work into twenty-one books, and into multiple into chapters, and supplied the 'Rubrish' or chapter-headings. Caxton finished his edition the last day of July 1485, some fifteen or sixteen years after Malory. By then it is clear that the author was dead, forcing the printer to have acted as an editor to the book. The name of a Sir Thomas Malorie, the most likely author of the book occurred among those of a number of other Lancastrians excluded from a general pardon granted by Edward IV in 1468, for having taken part in the Lancastrian rising of the Wars of the Roses. The Morte Darthur was written in prison by a prisoner distressed by ill-health as well as the lack of liberty. Which serves to explain why Mallory described himself as a Knight Prisoner. Mallory was a man of ideals who believed in courage and loyalty. He mourned the passing of chivalry, as a military man with a passion for the details of conquest, a prisoner's sense of injustice and a pentitent's desire for redemption. Near the end there is the petition, "pray for me; while I am alive that God send me good deliverance and when I am dead pray you all for my soul. This sickness is the greatest pain a prisoner may have." No original, it is said, has yet been found for many of the chapters. The great bulk of the work has been traced to the French Romances. Works such as 'Merlin' of Robert de Borron and his successors, the English metrical romance La Morte Arthur of the Thornton manuscript , the French romances of Tristan and of Launcelot. And lastly to the English prose Morte Arthur of Harley MS. 2252. As to Malory's choice he often gives a worse version where a better has come down to us. As if he had been unable to order a complete set of Arthurian manuscripts from his bookseller. Mallory was a skillfull, original genius, who used the books which were available to him. Malory died leaving his work unrevised, and in this condition it was brought to Caxton, who prepared it for the press. With enthusiasm, and with his usual carelessness. New chapters are sometimes made to begin in the middle of a sentence. And in addition to simple misprints there are numerous passages in which it is impossible to believe that we have the text as Malory intended it to stand. Subsequent editions after Caxton are differentiated only by the degree of closeness with which they follow the first. In 1868 Sir Edward Strachey produced for the present publishers a reprint of Southey's text in modern spelling, with the substitution of current words for those now obsolete, and the unfortunately abridging a handful of passages. In 1897 Mr. Israel Gollancz produced for the 'Temple Classics' a very pretty edition in which Sir Edward Strachey's modernisation of spelling and punctuation were adopted, with the restoration of obsolete words and omitted phrases. Which was in other respects in accurate accordance with Caxton's text. For the current edition I have tried to recreate the classic Illustrations of Aubrey Beardsly from the deluxe edition wherever possible. Contents Volume I BOOK I BOOK II BOOK III BOOK IV BOOK V BOOK VI BOOK VII BOOK VIII BOOK IX Volume II BOOK X BOOK XI BOOK XII BOOK XIII BOOK XIV BOOK XV BOOK XVI BOOK XVII BOOK XVIII BOOK XIX BOOK XX BOOK XXI |
