Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume 1

Sir Thomas Malory gathered the French and English legends of King Arthur into a single great prose story. This first volume begins with the birth of Arthur, the son of King Uther Pendragon, taken away by Merlin at birth and raised in secret; the sword in the stone that only he can draw; Excalibur, given to him by the Lady of the Lake; his marriage to Guinevere and the founding of the Round Table; his war against the emperor of Rome; and the adventures of his knights, Sir Gareth, who serves in the kitchen before proving himself, Sir Lancelot, the greatest knight of all, and the young Sir Tristram.

Malory finished the book around 1470, apparently in prison, and William Caxton printed it in 1485; it is the source of most later retellings of the Arthurian legend. The story of the Grail and the death of Arthur is in the second volume. Tennyson retold it in Idylls of the King, and Mark Twain mocked it in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.