Excerpt from Le Morte D'arthur, Vol. 1 Thus far of Malory's name: we now come to his work, which, as already mentioned, was finished in 1469. It was, however, not printed till 1485, when its publication was under taken by Caxton. Then followed two editions by Wynkyn de Worde in 1498 and 1529, and before the middle of the seven teenth century four more editions appeared: all these seven were in black letter. The eighteenth century appears to have been content with what the three previous ones had done for the text of Malory; but the nineteenth century has already seen it edited no less than six times, notably by Southey, Wright, Sir E. Strachey, and H. Oskar Sommer. Dr. Sommer's edition is comprised in three stately volumes, published in London by David Nutt: the first volume, consisting of the Text, appeared in 1889; then followed a volume of Introduction in 1890, and one of Studies on the Sources in 1891. This edition marks an era in the history of the Morte Darthur, seeing that special pains have been taken to make it reproduce the Caxton original, which is not known to exist in more than two copies, one of which is not quite perfect. This latter copy belongs to the Althorp Library, while the other, the perfect copy, once belonged to the Harleian Library. As regards its later history, we are told that it was purchased by the Earl of Jersey for his library at Osterley Park, and that in 1885 it became the property of a citizen of the United States, Mrs. Abby E. Pope of Brooklyn.l Lastly, I must add that no trace of Malory's own manuscript has ever been found. The question of the sources of Malory's work is no new one. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.