Stories of King Arthur
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Haydon, A. L. Stories of King Arthur. Ill. Arthur Rackham. London: Cassell and Co., 1910.
Before he created the well-known illustrations for Alfred W. Pollard's abridgment of Malory's Morte D'Arthur, The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table (1917), Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) had already produced images of some of the characters and tales in the Morte. His first Arthurian illustrations did not appear until 1902, when they were published in the magazine Little Folks under the title 'Stories of the Table Round.' Rackham reworked the original 'Stories of the Table Round' images, redated them, and published them in book form in Fairy Tales Old and New: A Collection of Stories from Old Fairy Tales (1905), a volume that also included tales from Grimm and Anderson. The same six Arthurian illustrations—four full-page watercolors and two black-and-white drawings—were later reprinted separately in Stories of King Arthur by A. L. Haydon, a children's book published by Cassell and Company in 1910. The illustrations focused on highpoints in Malory's tales that were meant to inspire young readers by depicting the heroic achievements of knights such as Arthur, Tristram, Breunor, Beaumains, and Galahad. In the cover illustration (which is repeated within the volume), Breunor (Le Cote Male Taile), the young knight in the ill-fitting coat, proves his worth by rescuing Guinevere and her ladies from a lion. The frontispiece image captures the scene in which a white hart chased by dogs and a knight appears in Arthur's hall on the day of his wedding, and that leads to a triple quest.
