The Once and Future King - Softcover

White, T. H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006483011 ISBN 13: 9780006483014

Publisher: Harper Voyager, 1996

Synopsis

The extraordinary story of a boy called Wart – ignored by everyone except his tutor, Merlin – who goes on to become King Arthur.

About this title

Review:

-A fierce and damaged man, T. H. White wrote about fierce and damaged people--and children, and animals--with a brilliant, painful innocence that has no equal in literature. He is so good at hurt and shame--how did he also manage to be so funny? I have laughed at his great Arthurian novel and cried over it and loved it all my life.---Ursula K. Le Guin
-Certain books offer pleasures so rich and enduring, they become part of what defines us. The Once and Future King is like that for me. It manages--by some miracle--to be about its own time, and a distant, legendary time, and about today. It mingles wisdom, wonderful, laugh-out-loud humor and deep sorrow--while telling one of the great tales of the Western world. I envy the reader coming to it for the first time.---Guy Gavriel Kay
-White took hold of the ultimate English epic and recast it in modern literary language, sacrificing none of its grandeur or its strangeness in the process, and adding in all the humor and passion that we expect from a novel. What was once as stiff and two-dimensional as a medieval tapestry becomes rich and real and devastatingly sad.---Lev Grossman
-Touching, profound, funny and tragic.---Los Angeles Times
-Richly imagined and unfailingly eloquent and entertaining, its appeal is timeless and universal. If a reader reads only one Arthurian tale, let this be it.---Booklist
-The Once and Future King is full of insights, scenes and flourishes that are really quite astonishing.---The Guardian (U.K.)

"A fierce and damaged man, T. H. White wrote about fierce and damaged people--and children, and animals--with a brilliant, painful innocence that has no equal in literature. He is so good at hurt and shame--how did he also manage to be so funny? I have laughed at his great Arthurian novel and cried over it and loved it all my life."--Ursula K. Le Guin

"Certain books offer pleasures so rich and enduring, they become part of what defines us. The Once and Future King is like that for me. It manages--by some miracle--to be about its own time, and a distant, legendary time, and about today. It mingles wisdom, wonderful, laugh-out-loud humor and deep sorrow--while telling one of the great tales of the Western world. I envy the reader coming to it for the first time."--Guy Gavriel Kay

"White took hold of the ultimate English epic and recast it in modern literary language, sacrificing none of its grandeur or its strangeness in the process, and adding in all the humor and passion that we expect from a novel. What was once as stiff and two-dimensional as a medieval tapestry becomes rich and real and devastatingly sad."--Lev Grossman

"Touching, profound, funny and tragic."--Los Angeles Times

"Richly imagined and unfailingly eloquent and entertaining, its appeal is timeless and universal. If a reader reads only one Arthurian tale, let this be it."--Booklist

"The Once and Future King is full of insights, scenes and flourishes that are really quite astonishing."--The Guardian (U.K.)

About the Author:

T.H. White died in 1964, leaving a literary legacy that places him alongside J R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Mervyn Peake as one of the 20th Century’s greatest British fantasists. He has inspired generations of fantasy writers, from Neil Gaiman to JK Rowling.

Born in India in 1906, White studied at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he wrote a thesis on Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. He found success with his ‘preface to Malory’, The Sword in the Stone, a wonderfully imaginative retelling of King Arthur’s early life. He continued to explore the Arthurian mythos in four further volumes – The Witch in the Wood, The Ill-Made Knight, The Candle in the Wind and The Book of Merlyn – a sequence collectively known as The Once and Future King. The novels were famously adapted into the Disney film The Sword in the Stone in 1963.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Voyager
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0006483011
• ISBN 13: 9780006483014
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 832