In the spring, the little flowers came out of the meads, and the dew sparkled, and the birds sang. In the Old England there was a great marvel still. But it sort of has the style of a children’s book a whimsical fairytale set in Merry Old England, with White deliberately marking it as such:

It’s not exactly a children’s book – I imagine a lot of the lengthier passages about bird calls and the finer points of jousting and hunting would bore most children, because they certainly bored me. I’ve heard The Once and Future King described as one of the greatest fantasy series ever written, and I was surprised to find that The Sword in the Stone, at least, is extremely whimsical and not particularly serious. Their father, Sir Ector, secures a tutor for them who happens to be the great wizard Merlin, and most of the book is a series of loosely connected little adventures, usually revolving around Merlin transforming the Wart into different animals so he can learn about how they live. The Once and Future King is an Arthurian fantasy, and The Sword in the Stone focuses on Arthur’s childhood as a boy nicknamed “the Wart,” growing up with his older brother Kay in a castle in England. Most people are probably more familiar with it as a Disney film adaptation from the 1960s, even if they haven’t seen it for some reason I also always confuse it with the Black Cauldron film/video game, which is apparently based on a different series of novels called The Chronicles of Prydain by one Lloyd Alexander, loosely based on Welsh mythology. White called The Once and Future King, a wonderful title. This is the first novel in a larger work by T.H.

The sword in the stone th white