The Story of King Arthur and His Knights

Howard Pyle wrote and illustrated this retelling in 1903, the first of four volumes that introduced American children to the Round Table. It opens with the boy Arthur drawing the sword from the anvil, then moves through the winning of Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, Arthur’s courtship of Guinevere while disguised as a gardener’s boy, the strange business of Merlin and Vivien, and the adventures of Sir Pellias and Sir Gawaine. Pyle’s English is deliberately old-fashioned, closer to Malory than to a nursery book, and the black and white drawings are among the finest he ever made. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.