MAL'ORY, or IVIALLORE, Sir TutamAS (flourished 1470). Author of the Marne War t/111•. Nothing certain about him is known be yond the meagre statements in the preface and the closing passage of his famous book. lie was a knight, and his translation was completed in the ninth year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth, i.e. in 1469 or 1470. According to Bale (Reriptores, 1548). he was a Welshman: and with Bale agree several recent Celtic scholars, asserting at least that his name is derived from the Welsh Machin With more probability G. L. Kittredge has identified him with a War wickshire Thomas Malory, Knight, who (Bid March 14, 1470. Nalory placed the manuserint of the Norte d'Arthur in the hands of William Caxton, who divided it into books and chapters and printed it in 1485. The contents are briefly summarized in the colophon: "Thus endeth thys noble and joyous book entytled le morte Darthur/ Notwythstondyng it treateth of the byrth/ lyf/ and aetes of the sayd kyng Arthur/ of his noble knyghtes of the rounde table/ theyr meruayllous enquestes and aduentures/ th'aellyeuyng of the sangreal/ & in thende the dolorous deth & de partyng out of thys world of them al." The hook was intended as a compendium of the various romances that had attached themselves to the legend of King Arthur. Here are the great stories of Lancelot and Guinevere, of Tristram and Iseult, and of all the knights and ladies as known to the reader of Tennyson's Idylls of the lying. Caxton expressly states that Malory re duced his book into English out of certain French books. So far as is known, these sources were
the prose Merlin, the prose Lancelot and the prose Tristan (thirteenth century), which in turn were expansions of Geoffrey of Monmouth, His tory of the British Icings (Latin prose), and the verse-tales of Chrestien de Troyes and other French romancers (second half of twelfth cen tury). Malory also made use of a fine English poem, known as the Monte Arthur (fourteenth century). Malory's compendium is necessarily loose in structure; but the career of King Arthur gives it a certain unity. It enjoys the distinc tion of being the first notable English prose romance.
The Monte d'Arthur was well received from the first. Caxton's edition in black letter was fol lowed by six similar editions down to 1634. The work was not again reprinted till 1S16, when two editions appeared. It is DOW accessible in the editions of Thomas Wright (London, 1856; new ed. 1897) ; Edward Strachey (modernized in spelling, Globe ed., ib., 1868, often reprinted) ; John Rhys (ib., 1893 ) ; the Temple Classics (ib., 1897) ; and Sommer (ib., 1889-91). The last, a reprint of the first edition, contains an exhaustive study by Sommer on the sources. and an essay by Andrew Lang on the style. Consult also: Selections, edited by Mead (Boston, 1897), and Inflections and Syntax, by Baldwin (Bos ton, 1894) ; Jusserand, Le roman au temps de Shakespeare (Paris, 1SSS). See ARTHUR ; GRA IL, THE HOLY; LANCELOT ; MERLIN; TRIS TRAM ; GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH.