Title: Le Morte D’Arthur, Volume I (of II)
King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table
Author: Thomas Malory
Editor: William Caxton
Release Date: November 6, 2009
Last Updated: August 3, 2020
Language: English.
Le Mort e D’Arthur
King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table
by Thomas Malory
IN TWO VOLS.—VOL. I
Contents__________________________
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
PREFACE OF WILLIAM CAXTON
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I. First, How Uther Pendragon sent for the duke of Cornwall and
Igraine his wife, and of their departing suddenly again.
CHAPTER II. How Uther Pendragon made war on the duke of Cornwall, and
how by the mean of Merlin he lay by the duchess and gat Arthur.
CHAPTER III. Of the birth of King Arthur and of his nurture.
CHAPTER IV. Of the death of King Uther Pendragon.
CHAPTER V. How Arthur was chosen king, and of wonders and marvels of a
sword taken out of a stone by the said Arthur.
CHAPTER VI. How King Arthur pulled out the sword divers times.
CHAPTER VII. How King Arthur was crowned, and how he made officers.
CHAPTER VIII. How King Arthur held in Wales, at a Pentecost, a great feast,
and what kings and lords came to his feast.
CHAPTER IX. Of the first war that King Arthur had, and how he won the field.
CHAPTER X. How Merlin counselled King Arthur to send for King Ban and
King Bors, and of their counsel taken for the war.
CHAPTER XI. Of a great tourney made by King Arthur and the two kings Ban
and Bors, and how they went over the sea.
CHAPTER XII. How eleven kings gathered a great host against King Arthur.
CHAPTER XIII. Of a dream of the King with the Hundred Knights.
CHAPTER XIV. How the eleven kings with their host fought against Arthur
and his host, and many great feats of the war.
CHAPTER XV. Yet of the same battle.
CHAPTER XVI. Yet more of the same battle.
CHAPTER XVII. Yet more of the same battle, and how it was ended by Merlin.
CHAPTER XVIII. How King Arthur, King Ban, and King Bors rescued King
Leodegrance, and other incidents.
CHAPTER XIX. How King Arthur rode to Carlion, and of his dream, and how
he saw the questing beast.
CHAPTER XX. How King Pellinore took Arthur’s horse and followed the
Questing Beast, and how Merlin met with Arthur.
CHAPTER XXI. How Ulfius impeached Queen Igraine, Arthur’s mother, of
treason; and how a knight came and desired to have the death of his master
revenged.
CHAPTER XXII. How Griflet was made knight, and jousted with a knight
CHAPTER XXIII. How twelve knights came from Rome and asked truage for
this land of Arthur, and how Arthur fought with a knight.
CHAPTER XXIV. How Merlin saved Arthur’s life, and threw an enchantment
on King Pellinore and made him to sleep.
CHAPTER XXV. How Arthur by the mean of Merlin gat Excalibur his sword of
the Lady of the Lake.
CHAPTER XXVI. How tidings came to Arthur that King Rience had overcome
eleven kings, and how he desired Arthur’s beard to trim his mantle.
CHAPTER XXVII. How all the children were sent for that were born on May-
day, and how Mordred was saved.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I. Of a damosel which came girt with a sword for to find a man of
such virtue to draw it out of the scabbard.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE_________
The Morte D’Arthur was finished, as the epilogue tells us, in the ninth year of
Edward IV., i.e. between March 4, 1469 and the same date in 1470.
It is thus,
fitly enough, the last important English book written before the introduction of
printing into this country, and since no manuscript of it has come down to us it is
also the first English classic for our knowledge of which we are entirely
dependent on a printed text. Caxton’s story of how the book was brought to him
and he was induced to print it may be read farther on in his own preface.
From
this we learn also that he was not only the printer of the book, but to some extent
its editor also, dividing Malory’s work into twenty-one books, splitting up the
books into chapters, by no means skilfully, and supplying the “Rubrish” or
chapter-headings. It may be added that Caxton’s preface contains, moreover, a
brief criticism which, on the points on which it touches, is still the soundest and
most sympathetic that has been written.
Caxton finished his edition the last day of July 1485, some fifteen or sixteen
years after Malory wrote his epilogue. It is clear that the author was then dead,
or the printer would not have acted as a clumsy editor to the book, and recent
discoveries (if bibliography may, for the moment, enlarge its bounds to mention
such matters) have revealed with tolerable certainty when Malory died and who
he was. In letters to The Athenaeum in July 1896 Mr. T. Williams pointed out
that the name of a Sir Thomas Malorie occurred among those of a number of
other Lancastrians excluded from a general pardon granted by Edward IV. in
1468, and that a William Mallerye was mentioned in the same year as taking part
in a Lancastrian rising. In September 1897, again, in another letter to the same
paper, Mr. A. T. Martin reported the finding of the will of a Thomas Malory of
Papworth, a hundred partly in Cambridgeshire, partly in Hunts.
This will was
made on September 16, 1469, and as it was proved the 27th of the next month
the testator must have been in immediate expectation of death. It contains the
most careful provision for the education and starting in life of a family of three
daughters and seven sons, of whom the youngest seems to have been still an
infant.
We cannot say with certainty that this Thomas Malory, whose last
thoughts were so busy for his children, was our author, or that the Lancastrian
knight discovered by Mr. Williams was identical with either or both, but such