Le Morte D'Arthur - Publication History

Publication History

Malory probably started work on Le Morte d'Arthur while he was in prison in the early 1450s and completed it by 1470. "Malory did not invent the stories in this collection; he translated and compiled them...Malory in fact translated Arthurian stories that already existed in thirteenth-century French prose (the so-called Old French Vulgate romances) and compiled them together with at least one tale from Middle English sources (the Alliterative Morte Arthure and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur) to create this text." He called the full work The hoole booke of kyng Arthur & of his noble knyghtes of the rounde table, but Caxton instead titled the publication with the name Malory gave to the final section of the cycle. Many modern editions update the spelling and some of the pronouns from Malory's original late Middle English, repunctuate and reparagraph, but otherwise leave the text as it was written; others update phrasing and vocabulary to contemporary Modern English. For example, from Caxton's 'preface', Middle followed by Modern English:

Doo after the good and leve the evyl, and it shal brynge you to good fame and renomme.

Do after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renown.

The Middle English of Le Morte D'Arthur is much closer to Early Modern English than the Middle English of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. If the spelling is modernized, it reads almost like Elizabethan English.

The first printing of Malory's work was made by Caxton in 1485; it proved popular, and was reprinted, with some additions and changes, in 1498 and 1529 by Wynkyn de Worde who succeeded Caxton's press. Three more editions followed at intervals to the time of the English Civil War: William Copland's (1557), Thomas East's (1585), and William Stansby's (1634), each of which manifested additional changes and errors (including the omission of an entire leaf). Thereafter the book went out of fashion until the time of the Romantic revival of interest in all things medieval; the year 1816 saw a new edition by Walker and Edwards, and another one by Wilks, both based on the 1634 Stansby edition. From Davison's 1817 edition (promoted by Robert Southey) on, Caxton's 1485 edition (or a mixture of Caxton and Stansby) was used as the basis for future editions, down to the time of the discovery of the Winchester Manuscript.

Caxton was responsible for separating Malory's eight book format into 21 books, subdividing each book into a total of 507 chapters, and adding a summary of each chapter and colophon to the entire book. Originally, Malory divided his work principally into eight tales:

1. The birth and rise of Arthur: "From the Marriage of King Uther unto King Arthur that Reigned After Him and Did Many Battles"
2. King Arthur's war against the Romans: "The Noble Tale Between King Arthur and Lucius the Emperor of Rome"
3. The book of Lancelot: "The Tale of Sir Launcelot Du Lac"
4. The book of Gareth (brother of Gawain): "The Tale of Sir Gareth"
5. Tristan and Isolde: "The Book of Sir Tristrams de Lyons"
6. The Quest for the Holy Grail: “The Noble Tale of the Sangreal”
7. The affair between Lancelot and Guinevere: "Sir Launcelot and Queen Gwynevere"
8. The breaking of the Knights of the Round Table and the death of Arthur: "Le Morte D'Arthur"

Most of the events in the book take place in Britain and France in the latter half of the 5th century. In some parts, it ventures farther afield, to Rome and Sarras (near Babylon), and recalls Biblical tales from the ancient Near East.