# Le Morte d'Arthur *Sir Thomas Malory's book of King Arthur and his noble knights* - Work: Story collection - Date: completed 1469–70; printed by Caxton 1485 - Made by: Sir Thomas Malory (Author) - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/works/le-morte-darthur/ > A knight-prisoner distills the sprawling French romances into one English saga — the sword from the stone, the Round Table, the Grail quest, Lancelot and Guinevere, and the last battle. **Why it matters:** Malory's book is the Arthurian legend as English readers know it; every later Arthur, from Tennyson and T. H. White to Excalibur, King Arthur Pendragon and Dark Age of Camelot, starts here. ## Quick answers **When was Le Morte d'Arthur first published?** Le Morte d'Arthur was first published in completed 1469–70; printed by Caxton 1485. **Who created Le Morte d'Arthur?** Le Morte d'Arthur was made by Sir Thomas Malory (author). **What kind of work is Le Morte d'Arthur?** Le Morte d'Arthur is a story collection in the Arthurian Fantasy and Myth & Epic tradition. **Why is Le Morte d'Arthur important?** Malory's book is the Arthurian legend as English readers know it; every later Arthur, from Tennyson and T. H. White to Excalibur, King Arthur Pendragon and Dark Age of Camelot, starts here. ## Overview *Le Morte d'Arthur* — "the death of Arthur", in the French that English writers used for the matter of chivalry — is the book that turned three centuries of scattered Arthurian romance into a single story with a beginning, a middle and a tragic end. [Sir Thomas Malory](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/thomas-malory/) took the vast French prose cycles and several English poems and reshaped them into a chronicle of King Arthur's reign: Uther's deception and Arthur's birth, the sword drawn from the stone, the founding of the Round Table, the adventures of Gareth, Tristram and Lancelot, the quest for the Holy Grail, and the love of Lancelot and Guinevere that brings the whole fellowship down. It is the source from which nearly every later English-language Arthur flows. When modern readers, filmmakers and game designers picture Camelot, they are mostly picturing Malory. ## Origins Malory tells us he finished the book in the ninth year of Edward IV's reign — 1469–70 — and asks readers to pray for his deliverance, describing himself as a "knight prisoner". Most scholars identify him with Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel in Warwickshire, a knight repeatedly imprisoned during the Wars of the Roses on a range of charges; the identification is widely, though not universally, accepted. His sources were chiefly the French Vulgate Cycle and the Prose *Tristan*, together with English poems including the Alliterative *Morte Arthure* and the Stanzaic *Morte Arthur*. He cut, compressed and reordered them, favoring action and the fellowship of knights over the French romances' interlacing digressions. William Caxton, England's first printer, published the book at Westminster on 31 July 1485, weeks before the Battle of Bosworth. Caxton divided it into 21 books and 506 chapters, added chapter summaries and fixed the title by which the whole work is known. For four and a half centuries his edition was the only Malory anyone knew. Then, in 1934, Walter Oakeshott discovered an earlier manuscript in the library of Winchester College. Eugène Vinaver's 1947 edition, *The Works of Sir Thomas Malory*, used it to show how much Caxton had edited, and argued that Malory had written a series of linked tales rather than one continuous book. ## The story Arthur, conceived through Merlin's magic, proves his right to the throne by drawing a sword from a stone, receives Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, and establishes the Round Table. The central books follow his knights on quests and tournaments: Lancelot, the greatest knight in the world and Guinevere's lover; Gareth, who arrives as a kitchen boy; Tristram and his doomed love for Isolde. The Grail quest scatters the fellowship; only the pure Galahad, with Percival and Bors, achieves the vision. Afterward the court fractures. Agravain and Mordred expose Lancelot and Guinevere, war breaks out between Arthur and Lancelot, and Mordred seizes the throne. Arthur and Mordred kill each other at the last battle; Bedivere returns Excalibur to the lake, and Arthur is carried away to Avalon. Malory records the tradition that his tomb reads *Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus* — here lies Arthur, the once and future king. ## Reception & impact Caxton's edition was reprinted by Wynkyn de Worde in 1498 and fed Tudor romance, including Edmund Spenser's *[The Faerie Queene](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-faerie-queene/)*, in which Prince Arthur rides again. After a long eclipse, the 19th-century medieval revival brought Malory back to the center: Tennyson's *Idylls of the King*, the Pre-Raphaelite painters and William Morris all worked from him. Malory became the backbone of [Arthurian fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/arthurian-fantasy/) — the version later writers revise, argue with or lovingly retell. ## Legacy In the 20th century [T. H. White](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/t-h-white/) took his title from Malory's epitaph and made *[The Once and Future King](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-once-and-future-king/)* (1938–58) an openly Malory-haunted retelling; John Steinbeck and Marion Zimmer Bradley followed with their own versions. John Boorman's film *[Excalibur](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/excalibur-film/)* (1981) staged Malory's arc in shining armor. [J. R. R. Tolkien](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/j-r-r-tolkien/) worked on an alliterative poem, *The Fall of Arthur*, in the 1930s; unfinished, it was published in 2013. Games took Malory as a rulebook for chivalry. The first printing of *Deities & Demigods* (1980) gave statistics to Arthurian heroes alongside the gods of the ancient pantheons. [Greg Stafford](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/greg-stafford/)'s *[King Arthur Pendragon](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/king-arthur-pendragon/)* (1985) went further, building an entire roleplaying game around Malory's world, with player-knights whose personality traits and passions — loyalty, love, honor — drive play across generations of a noble family. On computers, Sierra's *Conquests of Camelot* (1990) sent Arthur after the Grail, and Mythic Entertainment's *[Dark Age of Camelot](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dark-age-of-camelot/)* (2001) set its realm of Albion in the Arthurian world after the king's death. Excalibur itself became gaming's archetypal legendary sword, and the Grail quest — a fellowship scattering in search of one sacred object — remains the model of the epic questline. ## Facts - Malory finished the book in 'the ninth year of the reign of King Edward IV' (1469–70) and calls himself a 'knight prisoner'. - William Caxton printed it on 31 July 1485 — about three weeks before Richard III fell at Bosworth. - In 1934 Walter Oakeshott found an earlier, unknown manuscript in the library of Winchester College, revealing how heavily Caxton had edited Malory. - Malory's Arthur is buried under the epitaph 'rex quondam, rexque futurus' — the 'once and future king' of T. H. White's title. - The first 1980 printing of AD&D's Deities & Demigods included a section of Arthurian heroes. - Tolkien's unfinished alliterative poem The Fall of Arthur was published in 2013. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Morte_d%27Arthur) - [Deities & Demigods (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deities_%26_Demigods) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.