What you can draw on
The Matter of Britain has been rewritten by every century that touched it. These are the versions anyone may read, copy and build on.
Use the medieval and Victorian sources below. The stories are ancient, but a translation has its own copyright, so stay with the translations listed here rather than a modern paperback.
The texts
- Le Morte d'Arthur, volumes I and II
Sir Thomas Malory · printed 1485
The English shape of the whole legend: the Round Table, the Grail, Lancelot and Guinevere, Mordred, the last battle.
Volume II is at gutenberg.org/ebooks/1252.
- Histories of the Kings of Britain
Geoffrey of Monmouth, translated by Sebastian Evans, 1904 · Latin, about 1136
Where Arthur becomes a king with a chronology: Uther, Merlin's prophecies, and the campaign across the sea.
- The Mabinogion
translated by Lady Charlotte Guest, 1838–45 · Welsh tales, 12th to 14th century
The Welsh stratum: Culhwch and Olwen, Peredur, Rhiannon, Annwn. Names and otherworld logic that are not Malory's.
A Victorian collection with Victorian notes. Wonderful to write from, unreliable to cite as scholarship.
- Idylls of the King
Alfred, Lord Tennyson · 1859–1885
Arthur as a failed ideal and Guinevere's fall as the kingdom's. The tone most readers already half remember.
- Four Arthurian Romances
Chrétien de Troyes, translated by W. W. Comfort, 1914 · French, late 12th century
The invention of Arthurian romance: Lancelot, the cart, the fountain, the lion, and courtly love as a machine for plots.
- The High History of the Holy Graal
Perlesvaus, translated by Sebastian Evans, 1898 · Old French, early 13th century
The strangest Grail text: hermits, floating chapels, savage allegory. Less familiar, so better raw material.
- The Quest of the Holy Grail
translated by W. W. Comfort, 1926 · Old French, about 1225
The Vulgate quest itself: Galahad, the Siege Perilous, the Grail as monastic allegory.
- Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut
Wace, translated by Eugene Mason · French verse, 1155
The Round Table's first appearance in literature, and a court that is chivalric rather than merely royal.
- Layamon's Brut
Layamon, translated by Eugene Mason · English verse, about 1190–1215
Arthur in English for the first time: harsher, closer to the heroic age, elves at his birth and a boat to Avalon.
- On the Ruin of Britain
Gildas, translated by J. A. Giles · Latin, 6th century
The contemporary witness: Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Saxon advent, Badon Hill, and no Arthur named at all.
- History of the Britons
Nennius, translated by J. A. Giles · Latin, about 828
The first Arthur: leader of battles, the list of twelve, Vortigern, and the dragons under Dinas Emrys.
Already in the canon
Sealed here, and binding on anything written next. Build on them freely; contradicting one needs a very good reason and a steward's ruling.
Before you quote anything
- A 12th-century romance is free; a 1991 translation of it is not. Penguin and Oxford translations are in copyright, so do not paraphrase from them.
- Malory here is the Caxton text. The Winchester manuscript edition reads differently and is still in copyright.
- Sources disagree with each other, and that is allowed. Your entry has to hold together with Shared Myth's sealed canon, not with every medieval author at once.
That is the whole library. Pick an open thread and write into it.