The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

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By John Steinbeck & Chase Horton &

Publisher Description

Steinbeck's only work of fantasy literature—in a deluxe edition with a foreword by Christopher Paolini, New York Times bestselling author of Eragon, Eldest and Brisingr

A Penguin Classic

Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur was the first book that John Steinbeck truly enjoyed reading as a child. Fascinated by Arthurian tales of adventure, knighthood, honor and friendship, in addition to the challenging nuances of the original Anglo-Saxon language, Steinbeck set out to render these stories faithfully and with keen animation for a modern audience. Here then is Steinbeck’s modernization of the adventure of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, featuring the icons of Arthurian legend—including King Arthur, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, the incomparable Queen Guinevere, and Arthur's purest knight, Sir Lancelot of the Lake.

These enduring tales of loyalty and betrayal in the time of Camelot flicker with the wonder and magic of an era past but not forgotten. Steinbeck's retelling will capture the attention and imagination of legions of Steinbeck fans, including those who love Arthurian romances, as well as countless readers of science fiction and fantasy literature.

This edition features a new foreword by Christopher Paolini, author of the number-one New York Times bestselling novels Eragon, Eldest, and Brisingr. It also includes the letters John Steinbeck wrote to his literary agent, Elizabeth Otis, and to Chase Horton, the original editor of this volume.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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25 Reviews

3.5

Sean

Created 12 months ago

Stuart Campbell

Created about 1 year ago

Tyler Cooper

Created about 1 year ago

smellincoffee

Created over 1 year ago

“It befell in the days of yore, as I rode by a book-stall in a great city, that mine eye was caught by a fair volume of great renown: the noble acts and deeds of King Arthur and his knights, written by a worthy scribe named John Steinbeck, from the fair countrie of Salinas. And I was much astonished and pleased, and took it in mine hand and paid the price thereof. And yet so committed was I to other literary adventures that is only now, yea even now, that I was able to retire to my estates and cast my eye on these noble words. Right, so if you’re not up on your Mallory, then I’ll translate. Two years ago while exploring a thrift store, I stumbled upon a version of the King Arthur stories by John Steinbeck, of all people. Steinbeck writes at the opening that it was Mallory who made him fall in love with language, with words that could bewitch the mind. Some stories of Arthur and his knights then follow, though not all of them: Steinbeck estimated it would be a ten-year project, given the amount of research needed to do justice to the mission, and died before its completion. The included tales cover the rise of Arthur, his knights’ work in consolidating his power, and then the rise of questing to keep his men’s skills sharp and their minds out of mischief. Although I found to some degree what I was expecting – Arthur, Merlin, lots of adventure and questing – I encountered surprise after surprise. Admittedly, my sketchy-at-best knowledge of Arthurian lore helped. I knew from that faithful adaptation of Arthurian lore, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that Arthur’s father was Uther Pendragon: I did not know that Uther was a rapacious lech who, on spotting his vassal’s wife , the lady Igraine, immediately attempted to make her his and resorted to sorcery when war would not suffice. Arthur was the result. Fortunately for Arthur, his mum’s cuckholded hubs had the good grace to immediately get himself killed in war, sparing any nasty scenes with Medieval Maury Povich. Another surprise was the ‘death’ of Merlin, who was sealed up in a cave after a young woman seduced him into teaching her all of his knowledge of magical lore. Sounds villainous, but no – she simply replaces him as a quasi-guardian of the realm. Although it’s his name on the front cover, Arthur plays a curiously small role after the introductory stories. Most of the stories are about Arthur’s men, and I’d heard of very few of them. This is a world thick with chivalry and fancy, as knights constantly challenge one another, which is so tiresome that Merlin makes Arthur invisible at one point so he won’t be challenged for the nth time that day. There are several stories in here more interesting than most, like that of a young knight-errant who is mentored by a would-be warrior named Lyne, who regards herself as far more able in horsemanship and war than most knights, and indeed demonstrates studied insight into the errors of custom, as she points out to the knight the ways his armor is inferior, despite its brilliant appearance, and offers him advice into adjusting his stirrups as so not to be too top-heavy. This gives the book an interesting mix of fine technical detail along with its fantasy elements like giants and fairy-made swords. Another surprise came in a story about Lancelot being captured by four queens, all of whom are versed in magic, who are bored with their power and wealth and want to feature Lancelot in a little game in which he, like Paris, has to choose between their beauty and bribes. Lancelot, protected from the lady-types thanks to his courtly devotion to Guinevere, instead argues with them, and several fascinating discussions follow. Unfortunately for Lancelot, when he returns from questing Guinevere touches his arm in thankful greeting, and his courtly love becomes something altogether different. The final ramifications of Lancelot’s undoing don’t feature here, though. Perhaps my favorite moment of the book came when a man effectively tried to kill an unarmored and unarmed Lancelot, who survives only through wit and use of the elements around him: the vanquished brute’s wife comes out to harangue Lancelot for dispatching her oafish mate to perdition, and he tells her (in so many words) that were he not a knight, he’d spank her. The Acts of King Arthur and his Knights proved entertaining and surprising. I’m glad Steinbeck took on the project and am sad he was not able to finish it, given his love of the subject and his ability to bring these stories to life in both fancy and earnestness.”

Ashley Nef

Created over 1 year ago

About John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck, born in Salinas, California, in 1902, grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast. Both the valley and the coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree. During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929).

After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California books, The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with Tortilla Flat (1935), stories about Monterey’s paisanos. A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). The Grapes of Wrath won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.

Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with The Forgotten Village (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with Sea of Cortez (1941). He devoted his services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the controversial play-novelette The Moon is Down (1942).Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1948), another experimental drama, Burning Bright(1950), and The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951) preceded publication of the monumental East of Eden (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his own family’s history.

The last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely. Later books include Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957), Once There Was a War (1958), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961),Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962), America and Americans (1966), and the posthumously published Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969), Viva Zapata!(1975), The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976), and Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (1989).

Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, and, in 1964, he was presented with the United States Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968. Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.

Christopher Paolini is the New York Times-bestselling author of Eragon, Eldest and Brisingr.