Most Popular Books by T. H. White

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

"Learn. That is the only thing that never fails."--Merlyn the Wizard Before there was a famous king named Arthur, there was a curious boy named Wart and a kind old wizard named Merlyn. Transformed by Merlyn into the forms of his fantasy, Wart learns the value of history from a snake, of education from a badger, and of courage from a hawk--the lessons that help turn a boy into a man. Together, Wart and Merlyn take the reader through this timeless story of childhood and adventure--The Sword in the Stone. T.H. White''s classic tale of the young Arthur''s questioning and discovery of his life is unparalleled for its wit and wisdom, and for its colorful characters, from the wise Merlyn to the heroic Robin Wood to the warmhearted King Pellinore. Golden Kite Honor artist Dennis Nolan has loved The Sword in the Stone since childhood, and he imbues White''s tale with magic and mystery in his glowing illustrations. Readers who know Arthur or are meeting him for the first time will delight in this beautiful rendering of one of the greatest stories of all time.

"The Once and Future King" by T.H. White stands as a classic retelling of the Arthurian legend, weaving together myth, fantasy, and philosophical reflections. Originally published as separate novels between 1938 and 1958, White''s work culminates in this comprehensive and timeless narrative. The tale follows the life of King Arthur, from his early days as a young, uncertain boy under the care of the wizard Merlyn to his eventual reign and the establishment of the Knights of the Round Table. White skillfully explores themes of chivalry, war, love, and the complexities of leadership, all set against the backdrop of a mythical medieval Britain. The novel''s enduring appeal lies in its ability to blend adventure and introspection, offering readers a poignant examination of human nature and the pursuit of an idealized kingdom. As a significant contribution to Arthurian literature, "The Once and Future King" remains a captivating exploration of the timeless struggle between light and darkness, righteousness and betrayal.

This magical account of King Arthur’s last night on earth, rediscovered in a collection of T. H. White’s papers at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, spent twenty-six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list following its publication in 1977. While preparing for his final, fatal battle with his bastard son, Mordred, Arthur returns to the Animal Council with Merlyn, where the deliberations center on ways to abolish war. More self-revealing than any other of White’s books, Merlyn shows his mind at work as he agonized over whether to join the fight against Nazi Germany while penning the epic that would become The Once and Future King. The Book of Merlyn has been cited as a major influence by such illustrious writers as Kazuo Ishiguro, J. K. Rowling, Helen Macdonald, Neil Gaiman, and Lev Grossman. “Arriving from beyond the curve of time and apparently from the grave, The Book of Merlyn stirs its own pages, saying, wait: you didn’t get the whole story. . . . It gives us a final glimpse of those two immortal characters, Wart and Merlyn, up close, slo-mo, with a considered and affectionate scrutiny. The book is an elegiac posting from a master storyteller of the twentieth century. Its reissue in our next century is just as welcome as when it first arrived forty years ago. . . . Certainly the moral questions about the military use of force perplex the world still. . . . The efficacy of treaties, the trading of insults among the potentates of the day, the testing of weapons, the weaponizing of trade—these strategies are still front and center. Rather terrifyingly so. We do well to revisit what that old schoolteacher of children, Merlyn, has been trying to point out to us about power and responsibility.” —Gregory Maguire, from the foreword

The Queen of Air and Darkness, is the second book in T. H. White''s epic work; The Once and Future King. It continues the story of the newly-crowned King Arthur, his tutelage by the wise Merlyn, his war against King Lot, and also introduces the Orkney clan, a group of characters who would cause the eventual downfall of the King. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

This amusing foray into eighteenth-century literature is an entertaining tabloid biography of an age not unlike our own; men and women of fashion led their lives under the avid scrutiny of a public who had a sharp appetite for scandal and sensation. In the period between the so-called Age of Reason and the Romantic Revival - that which the author calls the Age of Scandal - aristocratic and privileged eccentrics flourished and the professional writer declined. Here we meet notorious persons such as the Marquis de Sade; the Duke of Queensberry; who dislocated London''s milk supply; and the countess of Kingston, who journeyed to Rome in the hope of seducing the Pope. There are also lesser figures like the Misses Gunning, who were so beautiful that seven hundred people sat up all night to see them leave an inn. T.H. White contends that these cultivated and fortunate individuals, best represented by Horace Walpole, were Elizabethan in their natures, without the formality of Alexander Pope or the exaggerated raptures of William Wordsworth.

In this 1952 publication T.H. White revisited the terrain of his earlier The Age of Scandal (1950) to once more explore various writings and doings in the lives of eighteenth century men and women of fashion who made themselves the sources of public sensation. Each of White''s short chapters takes as its subject a different aspect of English high society from the time. The topics on offer include mistresses and duellists, great houses and public executions, press-gangs and highwaymen, bluestockings and crooked politicians. Among the figures White examines more closely are Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the volcanic Thomas Pitt, the transgendered French diplomat-spy the Chevalier d''Eon, and the dandy Beau Brummell, who put extraordinary efforts into seeming to be an indolent fop. Clear throughout is White''s infatuation with a historical epoch marked by wit, excess, style and ceremony.

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, White later wrote, "A longing came to my mind that I should be able to do this myself. The word ''feral'' has a kind of magical potency which allied itself to two other words, ''ferocious'' and ''free.''" Immediately, White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. 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.

The Archangel Michael tells Mr. White and Mrs. O''Callaghan to, shades of Noah, prepare for a flood and build an arc