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Novel Quintet

Terence Hanbury White wrote the five books that comprise The Once and Future King between the late 1930s and the mid-1940s and the influence of World War Two is readily apparent in the books' strong anti-war message.
To class the five books - The Sword in the Stone, The Witch in the Wood, The Ill-Made Knight, The Candle in the Wind and The Book of Merlyn - as children's literature is too simplistic. Unfortunately, many people never get past the first book, The Sword in the Stone, which has a rather typical 1930's 'Boys Own adventure' feel to it, and perseverance is needed to get through some of the passages (which coul possibly be criticised as a trifle self-indulgent).
This initial reaction to the cycle is a shame, because the following books are well worth the read. Perhaps because of the approaching European war, or perhaps because of his own fascination with Malory and the inevitability of Arthur's betrayal and death, White imbues the final four books with a sense of approaching doom that never becomes overwhelming, or overly tragic (a considerable achievement), but rather unites the books.

The Once and Future King was one of the last of the Malory-inspired chivalric romances to appear as a modern novel. Within only a few years of The Once and Future King's publication as a complete work (1958). the Arthurian legend had been reinterpreted to present Arthur and his troubles as an 'almost' genuinely historical figure.

--Sara Douglass, The Betrayal of Arthur, Pages 306 and 308.

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