English 83

When Tessa asked the question – how did these stories become kids stories, I kind of scrambled for an answer, assuming it must have been Andrew Lang, the Scottish folklorist and prolific writer/translator. Lang may have adapted some Arthurian material, but Sidney Lanier (again, one of those 19th Century “men of letters”) wrote two books of adapted material, The Boy’s Mabinogian, and The Boy’s King Arthur (adapted from Malory). Given Victorian notions about childhood and sentimentality, these must be a primary source for our vague notion of Arthurian texts as stories for children.