Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table

Great book, well packaged and delivered

Another awesome leatherbound book by Canterbury Classics, this is the classic story by Sir Thomas Malory. Elegant gilded page edges and a royal blue ribbon marker. This book has a nice twelve page introduction, and black and white illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. The writing style is in old English, and actually quite enjoyable to read when you get used to it. I also have The Story of King Arthur and his Knights from Barnes and Noble, written by Howard Pyle. Being new to King Arthur's ledgend, at first this wasn't quite clear to me, but the two are different enough to have them both. This Thomas Malory edition is a lot more complete and mature, while Howers Pyle's book was originally a children's novel.

The Arthurian legend is a very fascinating part of mythology. We don't actually know how much of it is actually myth and if any of it is real. It's some true old fashioned story telling and this version was an interesting way to go about reading it. The experience was one of the most unique reading experiences I've had reading a book. This version that I bought was the Knickerbocker Classics edition. A beautiful looking book with a gorgeous outer hard case, some lovely illustrations and other features. The text is that of William Caxton, which was first published in 1485. The original material was written Thomas Malory, supposedly when he was in jail. I no doubt could have found a more modern edition, with more up to date spelling, grammar etc. But I didn't want that and was looking for a more authentic take. That is something I definitely got out of this book and to describe my opinions on it is quite difficult. What I mean by that is that well, I didn't find the book difficult to understand. Even if it reads like a drunken loon lying in the street corner re-telling a story to any passer by who'd listen. There were a lot of terms, phrases etc that I found alien to me. But it was easy to understand them after a quick definition search and the the context in which they were used through out the book. It was the way it was laid out that got me. The chapters (books or whatever they're called) are organised into large walls of text. What is in these walls of text is easy to understand but my eyes struggled to focus on such a mass of words. There are no paragraphs or structure to the text and it's all clumped together into one big mess. It's this that I found was truly hard to focus on. At times it gave me eye strain making it hard to follow my progress and which line I was on. That is the part I felt was over whelming. I had to take a break over the winter whilst I was in the middle of the book. Eye strain is one thing (an excuse to have a nice cup of tea) and I can easily take my time with it, but I found it even more difficult to keep track of my progress when distracted by sniffles, coughs, headaches etc. The story itself, I thought it was utterly fantastic. The characters were all very well detailed and there were so many. I loved the fact that they developed slowly over time and the more you read the book, the more personal it became with the likes of Tristram and Lancelot etc. It also made it more tragic when the stories came to a close and we learn the fates of our gallant knights. Despite the strange way it was written, there's a lot of information to take in and it painted a wonderful picture in my mind. One that I really can't see me forgetting. I could mention some of the tales that I enjoyed the most, but there are so many. It's hard to recommend this book to people. The story itself is fantastic and I don't think it's hard to understand (as mentioned above). But the way it is laid out might be a bit intimidating and I can fully understand it. But why I'd recommend, it's simply because this is one of the most important stories of our land. Things like this need to be taught in school, in my opinion. It needs to be read by people to understand cultural references going back hundreds of years. It's very important to our part of the world and needs to be treated as such. I would definitely recommend reading it one "book" or chapter at a time, or whatever stops you feeling over whelmed like I did. But I also recommend making the effort in general. It's a piece of history, a piece of culture and one that should be in all our collections.

Le Morte d'Arthur, de Sir Thomas Malory, edición de lujo en pasta dura en el idioma original, con ilustraciones de Aubrey Beardsley. Recibido a tiempo y en perfecto estado. Cuando comencé a revisarlo no podía creer la calidad y belleza de este libro. Compré hace muchos años esta obra en la edición de Penguin y siempre ha sido una de mis favoritas. Pero tenerla en esta soberbia edición es realmente una pequeña felicidad. Recomendable al 100%

The book itself looks and feels amazing, it was definitely made with love. Unfortunately, someone messed up and it got damaged... There is a tear between one of the first pages and the leather cover :/ There are also ugly scratches on the top edge of the pages. Returned.