The Book of Merlyn
novel 1977 The Once and Future King
Record
| First published | 1977 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780292707696 |
Synopsis
As King Arthur prepares for his final battle, the wizard Merlyn returns to complete the monarch's education by exploring the root causes of warfare. Through magical transformations into various creatures, Merlyn attempts to teach Arthur philosophical lessons about ethics and politics, mirroring the instruction he provided years earlier in The Sword in the Stone.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Once and Future King
- Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
- Author: T.H. White
Notes
- Written by White circa 1940-41 as an intended 5th and final part; rejected by his publisher due to wartime paper shortage and the manuscript's overtly anti-war/pacifist message, not merely length. Two specific chapters (the ant-colony and wild-geese transformation episodes) were salvaged and relocated into the revised Sword in the Stone section of the 1958 omnibus as new boyhood episodes; the remainder, including the didactic framing and the final Arthur-Merlyn dialogues; was not published until 1977, posthumously, by University of Texas Press. Remains a separate, less commonly printed 5th book, not merged into standard trade editions of The Once and Future King.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within The Once and Future King (standalone work): position 4 of 4: previous The Once and Future King (1958)
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Once_and_Future_King
- https://tvtropes.org
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Merlyn
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