The Book of Merlyn: The Conclusion to the Once and Future King

By T.H. White

The long-lost conclusion to The Once and Future King, in which King Arthur faces his final battle against his son.

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, bestselling author of Wicked,from the foreword

“Such a small thing, The Book of Merlyn, to hold so much. Joyful and despairing, heartbreaking, yet full of hope. As wonderful and fearful to read today as it was when I first found it in 1978. And the world has as much need of it today as it did then—more, perhaps. But will the world be ready to listen?” —Mercedes Lackey, New York Times–bestselling author of the Valdemar and Elves on the Road series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781477317358

Book preview

Reviews for The Book of Merlyn

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I agree with so many others who have said this is the worst of the series, but I did love seeing the characters’ stories wrapped up. I also got to read the ant & swan sections so many mentioned from The Sword in the Stone. My version didn’t have it in that section. Apparently it was originally in this book, but was shoved into the first book in later editions. Heavy-handed on the messaging, but I’m still glad I read it.

[atreic · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am not sure if I love or hate this book. It shouldn't exist - T H White wrote it as the fifth book of The Once And Future King, but then decided to scrap it, which means big chunks of it were shoved forcefully into The Sword In the Stone and the Candle in the Wind. Was it a good decision? I think so, it is a bit _too_ navel gazing and lecturing, War Is Bad, Communism Is Bad, Individuality is Good. But then why do I keep it on my bookshelf? There is something sad and sweet about these final scenes, Arthur about to die retreating to the world of Arthur in his childhood, rediscovering his animal friends. The bitterness he feels of having been a slave to what others needed him to do all his life, his final joy under the stars with England spread out at his feet and the hedgehog singing sweetly to him. The extra glimpses of Arthur make the heavy handed and moralising tone of this one still worthwhile.

[aulsmith · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I put off reading this book for over thirty years because I feared that it was more a political diatribe than a true ending to the saga. I was correct. It was rather like having a favorite uncle suddenly turning up senile and running off at the mouth about nonsense. You can still see touches of the master, but the politics are just too preachy to endure.

[nx74defiant · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not so much a story as a philosophical discussion on the nature of man.

[lucky2loki · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While the characterizations are lovely and the final few pages are very poignant, as a book the novel is horribly hampered by White's (via his mouthpiece Merlyn) pontificating and propagandizing of his personal philosophical revelations. As a discourse, the lectures on various warfare and violence related topics are entertaining enough, but as a novel there is an utter lack of drive and flow of story (with the exception, perhaps, of the ant colony chapters, and the introdoctury and epilogue chapters providing the framewok of the book). But for any reader of "The Once and Future King", it is nevertheless deeply touching to see how White originally wished to end his epic on a heartfelt and educational note, even if he gets in hiw own way by devoting an entire book's worth of break in the narrative to do so. For the particularly interested completist, this is therefore well worth the read, but I unfortunately wouldn't recommend it as a story on its own merits.

[threadnsong · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What an amazing book. I started reading it late last year after not having read Once and Future King for about 30 years, and it didn't quite make sense. So I re-read King and am now reading this book to finish the story.

Once again, Merlyn arrives to teach Arthur, but it is an aging King whom he sees bent over his war plans with tears on his face. Merlyn realizes that the King has forgotten the lessons of the Wart, as so many of us do when we become older and forget the beauty and joy that was sometimes in the world when we were younger. The idea of a single thing that could grab your attention to the exclusion of all else - this is a remembrance that Arthur finds when he is with the geese.

As polarized as this country is now, there are some who will object to T.H. White's thinly-veiled essays against war. The geese do not fight against their own kind just because": they see the world as one great big planet over which they fly and land when they need to. Different species share the same rock in the middle of the North Atlantic. By the same token, ants from different "tribes" will start the drumbeat and the propaganda for war the minute another ant arrives.

And of course, it is into misunderstanding and an ultimate war that Arthur faces as his reign comes to an end. He is heartbroken that his Round Table has come to its end: his best friend is exiled, his wife is trapped in the Tower of London, and his son wants to kill him. It is a tragic end to an otherwise beautiful story, and I am glad that White wrote these chapters and that they were finally published."

[leandrod-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lovely. I might disagree wiþ some of White’s moralising þru Merlyn & Arþur, but yet it is touchingly told.

[edgeworth_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

T.H. White’s Arthurian saga The Once And Future King has a troubled publication history. The final volume, The Book of Merlyn, was submitted to his publishers in 1941 but was rejected as part of a collected volume due to wartime paper rationing. Undeterred, White took two major sequences in it – in which Merlyn transforms Arthur into an ant and then a goose – and inserted them into the first book, The Sword in the Stone. The Book of Merlyn was thus unincluded in later collected editions of the series, until the manuscript was discovered amongst White’s papers after his death in 1964. It was included in future collected editions from 1977 onwards, but – in order to present everything as accurately as possible – retains the ant and the goose sequences in The Sword in the Stone, while also later repeating them in The Book of Merlyn. (This is particularly notable because the goose sequence is probably the most famous and well-loved thing White ever wrote.)It’s a bit less confusing when you’ve read it all the way through, but the funny thing is that those sequences feel a lot more like they belong in the first book, when Arthur was a child being transformed into animals all the time as part of his education with Merlyn, rather than the final book, where Arthur is whisked away on the night before the great battle with Mordred to discuss human nature and warfare with Merlyn and his council of wise animals. The vast majority of The Book of Merlyn takes place in the badger’s cosy underground den, which has the air of a cluttered library or gentleman’s parlour, as White (through Merlyn) expounds his philosophy about the wretched, violent nature of man.Understanding T.H. White goes a long way towards understanding The Once and Future King, and my edition has an afterword discussing how the book came about. White was an unhappy man for much of his life: an alcoholic, a closeted homosexual, and a pacifist in a time of just war. When World War II was looming in 1939, he relocated himself to neutral Ireland and spent the rest of the war there as a conscientious objector. At this stage The Sword in the Stone had already been published, but it’s clear that the outbreak of WWII greatly influenced the rest of the series. “I have suddenly discovered that… the central theme to Morte d’Arthur is to find an antidote to war,” White wrote to his publisher. The Book of Merlyn expresses this more clearly than any other volume in the series; along with The Sword in the Stone, it effectively bookends the series, as Merlyn compares mankind to various animals – only now, with Arthur as an adult, he is no longer teaching him but rather discussing an intractable problem with him, to the king’s increasing weariness and despair.The Book of Merlyn ultimately presents no conclusion on the matter, no coherent moral or philosophy, because White himself didn’t have one. He was a confused man, a man full of doubt, a man aghast at the horrors of the world, a man who tried to make sense of it all as best he could. He was a writer, in other words, who moulded his love of Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur into his own unique, funny, beautiful epic, a meditation on the failures and foibles of the human race.I liked The Book of Merlyn a lot; it’s probably my favourite out of the series. Despite a current of nihilism and despair, White brought back all the elements that made The Sword in the Stone such a success, and the result is a sweet and affecting tale of a man who tried to do his best. I didn’t always enjoy The Once and Future King, but The Book of Merlyn is a strong conclusion which serves the series well. And as for the series overall? I may not have always liked it, I may have been bored and frustrated with it at times, but I can nonetheless appreciate it objectively as a powerful and important work of English fantasy.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book was much publicized when it came out, but was disappointing. Apparently, the author used bits of it in the rest of "The Once and Future King". The characters are flat and didactic, and when I discovered that the book had been finished in 1941, the obsession with non-violence becomes understandable, but the treatment is unimaginative. give it a pass.

[darthdeverell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting from an historical sense, T.H. White transferred large parts of "The Book of Merlyn" into "The Sword in the Stone." While uses this fifth volume to expostulate on war, writing during the early years of Britain's involvement in WWII. Unlike the earlier volumes that were included in "The Once and Future King," this one is less about Arthur or his knights than it is about mankind itself. Additionally, though White always included a bit of presentism through Merlyn, who is living backwards through time, this book has the most of it during Merlyn's lectures and those of the animals as they weigh in on mankind and its tendency to war. Arthur, when he is active, is brilliant as the representative of humanity trying his best to do right, but the story glosses over his death, with White discussing the various interpretations of Arthur's death through different writers as if he were writing a literary critique of his own work.Anyone who wants to know more about White or the history behind "The Once and Future King" should pick up a copy of this if they come across it, but it's not necessary for enjoyment of the Arthurian legend as White interpreted it. The book is more about White's horror at World War II and, though it's beginning and end are tied to the larger narrative of "The Once and Future King," the middle is a philosophical lecture about the nature of war. Despite these caveats, White's beautiful prose is on full display here and Trevor Stubley's illustrations are haunting, especially as he portrays the aged Arthur.

[ejpells · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My All-time Favorite book

[comfypants · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

There's no story; White just uses Merlyn to give a lecture. And it's a really bad lecture. He'd been smoking the Ayn Rand pipe.

[samlives2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book almost as much as The Once and Future King, but I wish it had been published with the original. It would have worked better and probably appealed to more people if it had been written as another chapter as opposed to its own volume.Nevertheless, I adored this book. Arthur, now an old and wizened king, goes back to the days of his boyhood, and learns a few more important lessons from Merlyn by being changed into animals and learning their ways. White's commentary is insightful, and though there is little plot progression or action, anyone willing to sit down and think will enjoy this volume just as much as The Once and Future King.

[angeliquestratt · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The Book of Merlyn loses itself in its political message. The plot is essentially nonexistent and most of the book consists of political commentary thinly masked as conversations between characters. This book lacks the character development and plot development of The Once and Future King. That said, I have to admit I had some good laughs reading this book. Its absurdity makes it humorous. This book can be read as a satire of White's work, and I found it enjoyable to read from that perspective. If it doesn't sound appealing solely for the humor, I'd avoid it.

[laurscartelli · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is WEIRD. I completely understand where White was going with it and why he wrote it...but it's SO dense and SO condescending. While reading it, I just remember thinking WHY AM I PUTTING MYSELF THROUGH THIS!?! I get it! Society is corrupt! Humanity is corrupt! in 2009 EVERYONE IS WRITING ABOUT THIS so it's almost useless to read a book like this NOW. In 1977 the publishers thought it was a good idea. Thought that, even though White wasn't around to approve the proofs, it was classy reading. Ugh. In 1950 it would have been a good read. In 1967 it would have been perfect. Now it's just....annoying.

[upstairsgirl · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Due to a paper shortage during the war, The Book of Merlyn was not included with the rest of The Once and Future King, although several of the episodes from it were included in "The Sword in the Stone" section. Stylistically, it's quite different from the rest of The Once and Future King, and, had it been appended as White intended, one would have lost the beautiful tragedy of the old and reluctant King rising to face his final battle, having entrusted his history to the young page who would grow up to be Malory. The Book of Merlyn at its worst is a splenetic, rambling, furious screed, and even at its best, it is not up to the standard White set for himself in The Once and Future King.

[alaskabookworm · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Intended to the be the fifth and final installment of White's "The Once and Future King" series, it never got included. Without it, "The Once and Future King" lacks closure. Apart from "The Once and Future King," "The Book of Merlyn" probably won't make sense. But White brings his meandering saga of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table full-circle with this book.

[drewandlori · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not nearly as good as "the Once and Future King", but still an intriguing way to end White's epic version of Camelot.

[hockeycrew_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My only recommendation for this book would be that you a) read The once and Future King first and b) read The Once and Future King shortly before reading this last chapter. I found myself a little lost because I had not read the previous 4 chapters in many years.

[parelle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In which it is discovered that TH White honestly really did have a political mission. A mixture of passages from the Sword in the Stone and other animal adventures mentioned but not seen in the Once and Future King, I'm not sure that the tale would have been better ended where it did after all.

[alexthehunn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a disappointing fifth book to the four books that constitute The Once and Future King. One wonders if White's editor omitted this section intentionally because it was weaker or if it is weaker because it was omitted and therefore polished less.