White presents a collection of unusual fantasy tales--ranging in time from the fourteenth century to the present--about magic and sorcerers, werewolves, cannibal trolls, mythical creatures, and more
Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the 12th Century
A preeminent medievalist presents a wonderful catalog of real and fanciful beasts, including the manticore, griffin, phoenix, amphivius, jaculus, and many other exotic animals. White's witty, erudite commentary on scientific and historical aspects enhances this survey of proto-zoology on which science is based and pre-scientific perceptions of the earth's creatures. 128 black-and-white illustrations.
Here all five volumes that make up the story are published together in a single volume, as White himself always wished. Here is King Arthur and his shining Camelot, beasts who talk and men who fly; knights, wizardry and war. It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad; the masterpiece of fantasy by which all others are judged.
White presents a collection of unusual fantasy tales--ranging in time from the fourteenth century to the present--about magic and sorcerers, werewolves, cannibal trolls, mythical creatures, and more
This account of one man’s tempestuous relationship with the hawk he trained is at once a comedy of errors, a classic of nature writing, and one of the best glimpses into the world of falconry. The predecessor to Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, T. H. White’s nature writing classic, The Goshawk, asks the age-old question: what is it that binds human beings to other animals? White, the author of The Once and Future King and Mistress Masham’s Repose, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular sentence—“the bird reverted to a feral state”—seized his imagination and he immediately wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient of depriving him of sleep. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love. White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos—at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literature’s most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness—as it exists both within us and without.
"... a personal as well as historical story that crisscrosses the centuries on the question of war & peace." - NY Times This magical account of King Arthur's last night on earth spent weeks on the New York Times Best-seller List following its publication in 1977. Even in addressing the profound issues of war & peace, The Book of Merlyn retains the life & sparkle for which White is known. The tale brings Arthur full circle, an ending, White wrote, that "will turn my completed epic into a perfect fruit, 'rounded off & bright & done'."
