Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 14, King Arthur

Morris, Charles, 1833-1922Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4
Word count
490K words
Chapters
49

Tags

English Originals History BooksFolk Literature Historical ReappraisalMedieval RomanceLegendary LivesAdventure JourneyFate and FortunePower GameGroup BiographyHeroismChivalryAncient Style

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 14 (of 15), King Arthur (2) by Malory et al.Author: Morris, Charles, 1833-1922,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: May 8, 2010

Editor's review

This volume, the 14th in Charles Morris's Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality series, centers on the Arthurian legend and draws on Arthurian narratives by Malory and others. It reorganizes legendary material into retellings for a general readership, balancing storytelling with readability, and suits readers seeking an initial overview of the Arthurian tradition. As a popular history compiled a century ago, its prose carries a pronounced period style—long sentences and dense allusions—and demands some patience. It works well as an introductory guide to the Arthurian stories, helping readers establish a basic framework of characters and events before turning to primary texts or scholarly studies. The electronic edition is easy to search for names and revisit chapters, making it suitable for reading alongside notes.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Start with the table of contents and chapter summaries, build a character map, then begin the main text.
  2. Mark unfamiliar knights or place names and look them up after finishing each chapter.
  3. After each section, briefly summarize the main events in Chinese to check whether you have grasped the thread.
  4. Read alongside a character list or timeline of the Arthurian legend for reference.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49

FAQ

Is this book an original Arthurian source text? It is not a single source text but one volume in Charles Morris's popular history collection, drawing on Arthurian narratives by Malory and others. It is better described as a retelling and compilation for a general audience, suitable as an introduction rather than a basis for textual criticism.
Can I understand it without any background in Arthurian legend? You can follow the main storyline, but the characters and allusions are dense. It is advisable to learn about Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, and other principal figures first; reading will then be much smoother.
Why do the sentences feel so long? The book was written in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, in a classical style with long, information-dense sentences. Slow down and read in sentence groups; there is no need to finish a whole chapter in one sitting.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Morris, Charles, 1833-1922 Author

Charles Morris (1833–1922) is an English-language author about whose life relatively little is publicly documented; his nationality and education are not well recorded, and 18 of his works are currently held in the collection. Judging from these works, he excelled at history and general knowledge writing for ordinary readers. His representative works include the Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality series, whose volumes treat such subjects as King Arthur, America, Spanish America, Spain, and Scandinavia, presenting historical events and legends in a lively and readable manner. He also wrote A New History of the United States, a general account of American history; The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire, a record of the San Francisco earthquake and fire; and Man And His Ancestor: A Study In Evolution, which concerns evolutionary themes. His writing draws on a wide range of materials and balances narrative interest with the popularization of knowledge.