Le Morte d'Arthur, Le Morte Darthur or as the spelling of the first edition was from 1485, a spelling also called in later (scientific) publications was applied, is a series of stories around King Arthur, compiled and written by Sir Thomas Malory.
The title is old-French and means the death of Arthur. The definite article le (instead of la) is according to Stephen h. a. Shepherd a mistake by Malory.
Malory, about whose life little is known with certainty, it would work partly have written during his imprisonment. He was convicted of various crimes several times.Malory based at scoring the stories on a single English and French sources known to him, to which he gave his own interpretation. He would have completed the work around 1470. A version, may not be the original manuscript, came into the hands of William Caxton, the first English printer, that work spent in 1485, when Malory probably already was dead. Caxton edited the work personally and did that on quite sloppy manner. He divided the text sometimes arbitrarily in 21 parts and made their own chapter format.
The title of the work is taken from a note of Caxton at the end, where he writes: Thus endeth this noble and joyous book entitled Le Morte Darthur. The death of Arthur, where the title refers to, will not be, logically, discussed in the last section.
Reprints of the work, always with small adjustments, were produced by among others Caxton's successor Wynkyn de Worde in 1498 and 1529, by William Copland in 1559, by Thomas East about 1585 and Stansby by Thomas in 1634. This last version was in the 19th century, when the story under the influence of the Romance came again in the spotlight, republished in 1816 and 1856.
Then arose In 1934 for an interesting development: in the library of the Winchester College was by W.F. Oakshotte in a safe a manuscript dated could be detected around 1475. It turned out not to be but Malory's original manuscript older than and different from the version published by William Caxton. The manuscript consists of eight parts, and not from the Caxton devised by 21. Oakshotte was asked on the basis of this find to publish a new edition, but left that to the French/English literary expert Eugène Vinaver, a connoisseur in the field of French sources. A first edition of his hand appeared in 1947, a revised version came out in 1967.
The Winchester-Edition consists of the listed eight parts and describes successively
- Arthurs birth and rise
- the fight against the Romans
- the story of Lancelot: "The Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot Du Lac"
- the story of Sir Gareth (brother of Gawain)
- Tristan and Isolde
- the quest for the Holy Grail: "The Noble Tale of the Sangreal"
- The Knight of the Cart, about the affair between Lancelot and Guinevere
- Arthur's death and the end of the Knights of the round table
The English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote in the 19th century a series of poems based on Malory's work under the title Idylls of the King.
T.H. White in his famous also makes The Once and Future King series of books using Malory's sources and work.