My Collection of Arthurian Books

After my semi-disappointing read of ‘I Am Morgan le Fay’, I’ve been contemplating reading books on the original Arthurian lore.

I have a few books I’ve collected over the years, which I’ve dipped into from time to time, but, apart from a couple, have never read cover to cover.

Here’s my little collection…

‘King Arthur: King of Kings’ by J Markale

I came across this non-fiction book while reading articles about Arthurian lore and it piqued my interest.
‘King Arthur: King of Kings’ by J. Markale.
‘Markale has written the definitive work on King Arthur. By means of masterly historical, geographical and literary deduction he recreates the real three-dimensional King Arthur, the Celtic warrior-hero who organised the resistance to the Saxon onslaught in fifth-century England. His unsurpassed knowledge of Celtic history has enabled him to reconstruct precisely for us the world in which King Arthur lived, its heroes and its values and to define the place which Arthur occupied in such a world.’

‘Le Morte Darthur’ by Sir Thomas Malory (Illustration - ‘The Lamentation of King Arthur’ by William Bell Scott)

‘Le Morte Darthur’ by Sir Thomas Malory, originally published in 1485.
‘The Legend of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table is one of the most enduring and influential stories in world literature. Its themes – love, war, religion, treachery and family loyalty – are timeless, as are the reputations of its major characters, Arthur, Merlin, Geunever and Launcelot.
Malory’s Le Morte Darthur is a story of noble knights, colourful tournaments and fateful love, set in a courtly society which is outwardly secure and successful, but in reality torn by dissent and, ultimately, treachery.’

‘The Once and Future King’ by TH White (Illustration by Stephen Lavis)

‘The Once and Future King’ by T.H. White.
‘Hailed as one of the great contemporary classics. The Once and Future King is T.H. White’s masterly retelling of the Arthurian legend. The story of Arthur from his earliest days as the ward of Sir Ector to the final passing of the dying king is recounted in compelling detail.’

‘The Book of Merlyn’ by TH White (Illustration by Stephen Lavis)

‘The Book of Merlyn’ by T.H. White, ‘the long lost final volume of the classic Arthurian epic, ‘The Once and Future King’.
‘The aged King Arthur, alone and disillusioned on the eve of his last battle, is visited by his childhood tutor, Merlyn. Through the magician’s powers, he is reunited with his old animal friends and undergoes two final transformations. From the worlds of the ant and the geese he learns his last lessons on the nature of man and of war, before returning to face his own fate, comforted by the knowledge that man will endure.’

‘The Coming of the King’ by Nikolai Tolstoy

‘The Coming of the King’ by Nikolai Tolstoy, ‘takes us into the world of Merlin, into the bright daylight and the deep shadows of Britain in what we call the Dark Ages. It is a world of warriors in love with slaughter and death, but also of poets and druids, a world of savage cruelty but also of intense natural beauty, of laughter and proud boasting, but also of magic and mysticism.’
‘King Arthur sleeps with his warriors, and the invaders he defeated still hold much of the country. But now the kings of Britain have ceased warring with each other and are assembling their forces for the last great battle that will sweep the heathen back into the sea and make Britain free and mighty again. Ahead of their great host goes Merlin, at once child and man, poet and demi-god, travelling alone to read the runes of the heavens and the oceans and the most intimate places of the earth. For as the warriors march towards their fate it becomes clear that this will be no ordinary battle, but one that will be fought among the elements and between supernatural forces, and that must be won and lost over and over again until the end of time.’

‘Firelord’ by Parke Godwin

And, finally, what is, to date, my favourite Arthurian story, ‘Firelord’ by Parke Godwin, which I reviewed in 2015. As I said back then, ‘Godwin has made Arthur into a man who could have existed.’

To quote Godwin, “That [the characters] didn’t all live at the same is beside the point. Very likely some of them did. Assembled on one stage in one drama, they make a magnificent cast. It should have happened this way, it could have, and perhaps it did.”

Instead of reading these one after the other, I’ll probably intersperse them with totally unrelated books to keep the topic comparatively fresh.

Now, which one to read first?