The recent death of the British novelist Terence Hanbury White probably passed unnoticed among the majority of readers, yet White is the major interpreter of the Arthurian legend in the twentieth century, and his book The Once and Future King possibly will endure as one of the great works of romantic fiction in English literature. It is unjust that the novel has been given so little critical acclaim, and it seems appropriate at this time to evaluate its uniqueness and significance in the evolution of the Arthurian story.

White's treatment of the Matter of Britain is a further demonstration that practically every age has found in the legend something of its own problems and conflicts. In his Morte Darthur Malory selected and condensed certain episodes from early French romances to remind his contemporaries of the necessity for more loyalty and leadership in fifteenth-century society….

After four centuries of...