Merlin as a fatherless boy before King Vortigern, the crowning of Arthur and the sword Excalibur, Balin and Balan, the founding of the Round Table, the adventures of Lancelot, Gareth and Tristram, the Quest of the Holy Grail, Lancelot and the fair Elaine, and the war that ends in the passing of Arthur: the whole cycle in one book, told for young readers in plain, lightly archaic prose. Rupert S. Holland built it on the Victorian abridgment of Malory's Morte Darthur made by Sir James Knowles, added the tale of Sir Gawain and the Maid with the Narrow Sleeves from Chrétien de Troies, and opened it with an essay on how a British war-chief of about the year 500 became the greatest king of romance. Fifty-eight plates of painting, from Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott to Rossetti's Proserpine, gather the romance, chivalry and loss that run through the whole cycle.
