The Tale of the Death of King Arthur VG Very Good Condition

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955. First Edition. Hardcover. In exceptionally good condition. Octavo, [22.5cm/9inches], full gilt-embossed oxford-blue cloth sans dust jacket, pp. xxvi, pp. 146, indexed. Please feel free to inquire as to particulars and/or additional photographs. ... Eugène Vinaver was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia and studied at the Sorbonne, concentrating on French and English Arthurian romances. In 1928, he founded the Arthurian Society in Oxford, which later became the International Arthurian Society. Vinaver is best known for his seminal edition of the Winchester Malory. Until 1934, all versions of Malory’s Morte were based on the text published by English printer William Caxton in 1485.  For over 400 years, it was unclear what, if any, alterations Caxton had made to Malory’s original text.  This all changed with the 1934 discovery of the Winchester manuscript, a hand-written (rather than printed) text untouched by Caxton, and therefore deemed closer to Malory’s original than the Caxton edition. It required thirteen years’ work on Vinaver’s part to publish his edition; in the interim, nobody else, (aside from Manchester University’s librarian), had access to the manuscript. Besides his work on Malory, Vinaver was also recognized for his 1944 discovery and publication of Racine’s notes on Aristotle’s Poetics, which “had almost as profound an effect on studies of French neo-classical tragedy as did his edition of Malory on studies in medieval English literature” (-Bennett, Philip E. “Vinaver, Eugène (1899-1979)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). For more info see: Eugène Vinaver's Magnificent Malory: Exhibit Guide by Pamela M. Yee  on the University of Rochester’s Camelot Project website.