Le Morte d'Arthur

Le Morte d'Arthur is a 15th-century work written in Middle English prose. It is a compilation and reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of stories about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table, including their associated folklore, such as the quest for the Holy Grail and the tale of Tristan and Iseult. To create a "complete" narrative of Arthur from his birth to his death, Malory assembled, rearranged, interpreted, and modified material from various French and English sources.

The work was apparently written in prison near the end of the medieval English era. Malory finished it around 1470, and it was first published in a printed edition in 1485 by William Caxton. Until the Winchester Manuscript was discovered in 1934, the 1485 edition was thought to be the earliest known text and the one closest to Malory's original version.

Today, this book is one of the most famous works of Arthurian literature. Many writers since the 19th-century revival of the Arthurian legend have relied on Malory as their main source. Modern editions come in many titles and vary, changing spelling, grammar, and pronouns for modern readers, and often shortening or revising the material.

**History**

**Authorship**

The exact identity of Le Morte d'Arthur's author has been debated for a long time, because at least six historical figures named "Sir Thomas Malory" (spelled in different ways) lived during the late 15th century. In the work, the author calls himself "Knyght presoner Thomas Malleorre" (or "Sir Thomas Maleore" according to publisher William Caxton). This has historically been taken as evidence for the identification most scholars accept: that the author was Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, Warwickshire, son of Sir John Malory.

According to a timeline proposed by P. J. C. Field, Sir Thomas of Newbold Revel inherited his family estate in 1434, but by 1450 he was deeply involved in a life of crime. As early as 1433, he had been accused of theft, but more serious charges included attempted murder of Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, at least two accusations of rape, and attacking and robbing Coombe Abbey. Malory was first arrested and imprisoned in 1451 for ambushing Buckingham, but was released early in 1452. By March, he was back in the Marshalsea prison and then in Colchester, escaping multiple times. In 1461, King Henry VI granted him a pardon, and he returned to live at his estate. After 1461, however, few records survive that scholars agree refer to Malory of Newbold Revel. In 1468–1470, King Edward IV issued four more general pardons that specifically excluded a Thomas Malory. The first of these named Malory a knight and applied to participants in a Lancastrian campaign in Northumberland. Field interprets these exclusions as referring to Malory of Newbold Revel, suggesting he changed his allegiance from York to Lancaster and was involved in a conspiracy with Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, to overthrow King Edward. William Matthews, noting this candidate's advanced age at the time of the Northumberland campaign and his residence much further south, interprets this record as referring to his own proposed candidate for authorship. Field proposed that Malory wrote *Le Morte d'Arthur* during a final stint at Newgate Prison in London, and that he was released in October 1470 when Henry VI returned to the throne, dying only five months later. This Warwickshire knight was widely accepted as the author until Matthews' research was published in 1966.

This identification was widely accepted through most of the 20th century based on the assumption that this candidate was born around 1416. Field proposed the 1416 date, contradicting the original record of this knight's military service by Dugdale. In 1966, Matthews published research showing that Malory of Newbold Revel had actually been an officer under King Henry V in the famous Agincourt campaign by 1414 or 1415, confirming Dugdale's original record and placing this knight's birth around 1393. Some late 20th-century researchers doubted this, arguing it would make the Newbold Revel knight far too old to have written *Le Morte*: in prison in his mid-70s to early 80s, when, in Matthews' words, "the medieval view was that by sixty a man was bean fodder and forage, ready for nothing but death's pit." Because no other contemporary Thomas Malory had been shown to have been knighted, the question remained unresolved.

The second candidate to receive scholarly support is Thomas Mallory of Papworth St Agnes in Huntingdonshire. His will, written in Latin and dated 16 September 1469, was described in an article by T. A. Martin in the *Athenaeum* magazine in September 1897. This Mallory was born in Shropshire in 1425, the son of Sir William Mallory, though the will does not indicate he was himself a knight; he died within six weeks of making the will. It has been suggested that his upbringing in Lincolnshire may account for traces of Lincolnshire dialect in *Le Morte Darthur*. This candidate has not attracted as much scholarly attention as the Newbold Revel knight.

The most recent contender for authorship emerged in the mid-20th century: Thomas Malory of Hutton Conyers and Studley Royal in Yorkshire. This claim was put forward in 1966 in *The Ill-Framed Knight: A Skeptical Inquiry into the Identity of Sir Thomas Malory* by William Matthews. Matthews' main arguments for the Yorkshire Malory were the northerly dialect of the *Morte* and the likelihood that the pardon-exclusions referred to this candidate.