Sir Thomas Malory

Sir Thomas Malory (died 1471) was the author of Le Morte d'Arthur, the great English prose compilation of the Arthurian legends, completed in 1469 or 1470 and printed by William Caxton in 1485. He is most often identified with a Warwickshire knight of that name who sat in Parliament, then spent much of the 1450s and 1460s in prison on charges of theft, extortion, rape and attempted murder; the book's closing prayer by "a knight prisoner" supports the identification. Working from French romances and English poems, he shaped the stories of Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere and the Grail into the form that nearly everyone since has followed.