The English author Sir Thomas Malory (active 15th century) wrote Le Morte Darthur, one of the most popular prose romances of the medieval period. The work was the first full-length book in English about the adventures of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Although Le Morte Darthur (also known as Le Morte d'Arthur) is universally accepted as a masterpiece of imaginative literature, so much mystery surrounds the identity of the author (that is, which one of several Sir Thomas Malorys of the 15th century actually wrote it) that any one definitive biography seems imprudent. The only direct information extant concerning the author is that a Sir Thomas Malory completed the book while he was a "knight-prisoner" in the ninth year of Edward IV's reign, from March 4, 1469, to March 3, 1470. All the rest is conjecture.

In the 16th century John Bale associated Malory with Welsh origins mainly...