Le Morte Darthur

Sir Thomas Malory's Book of
King Arthur and of his Noble
Knights of the Round Table

IN TWO VOLS.--VOL. I



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

THE Morte Darthur 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