About the book:
White's retelling of the Arthurian legend across four books, beginning with the young Arthur's education by Merlyn and ending with the collapse of the Round Table.
Comic and melancholic in equal measure, it takes the myth seriously enough to find genuine tragedy in it.
The source material for the musical Camelot, but far richer than its reputation suggests.
Condition:
Reasonable secondhand condition.
Spine detaching - can be easily repaired.
All pages intact and readable.
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About the author:
T.H. White (1906 to 1964)
Born Terence Hanbury White in Bombay, British India, in 1906, T.H. White had a difficult childhood marked by an alcoholic father and an unstable mother. Sent to England for schooling, he studied at Cambridge and later taught for several years before devoting himself to writing. His love of nature, falconry, and medieval literature, combined with a deeply private and often tormented personal life, shaped his unique body of work.
His early success came with England Have My Bones (1936), but it was The Once and Future King (1958)a retelling of the Arthurian legendthat became his masterpiece. White developed a style that blended scholarly knowledge of the Middle Ages with modern psychological insight, humour, and poetic prose. He treated the Arthurian world as both mythic and deeply human.
Deeply influenced by medieval literature, Thomas Malorys Le Morte dArthur, and the natural history writing of his time, White in turn became a major influence on modern fantasy and childrens literature. He profoundly shaped writers such as J.K. Rowling, Ursula K. Le Guin, and many authors of Arthurian fiction, and is adjacent to figures like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien in their engagement with myth, morality, and the English countryside.
Recurring preoccupations include the tragedy of power and idealism, the conflict between might and right, the complexities of human (and animal) nature, education, and the passage of time. Major works include the tetralogy The Once and Future King (comprising The Sword in the Stone, The Witch in the Wood, The Ill-Made Knight, and The Candle in the Wind), The Goshawk, and The Book of Beasts.
White lived much of his later life in Ireland and died in Greece in 1964 at the age of 57.
T.H. Whites influence on literature is enduring: he revitalized the Arthurian legend for the modern age with psychological depth and emotional power while remaining utterly unique in his blend of scholarly passion, quirky humour, and profound melancholy.
