The Arthurian Companion: The Legendary World of Camelot and the Round Table (Paperback)

She covers places and names, characters and events in the assorted legends, in informative but not overdone entries. Several different interpretations of, for example, Morgan le Fay are covered in her entry, coming from the assorted sources. Gaps in information are usually acknowledged by the author, and she provides the reader with speculation as to origins and meanings.

The body of information is mind-bogglingly enormous; I can only speculate how long it took Karr to get it all whipped into a neat, well-written book of only six hundred pages. Her writing is often made lengthy simply by the enormous amount of material to be compressed. In addition, she often says, "I think" or "I found," which oddly is not irritating, but rather creates the feeling that the reader is simply listening to a learned scholar speak out loud. It feels very thorough, filling out every character's background and experiences -- yes, even the insignificant ones.

Like all Green Knight Press books I've purchased, this book has nice sturdy paper, clean text and a strong binding; like most of their books, it also has a great cover.

Any fan of Arthurian lore or fiction must read this book, for the sake of insight into characters large and small in books that you read.

The Arthurian Companion is the result of Karr's research in the original sources of the legends of King Arthur, including Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, and the French Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances. The majority of the book consists of over a thousand encyclopedic entries. All of the major and most of the minor characters mentioned in the sources are discussed, with references to where they appear in the texts. Places, from Camelot to Karadigan, and objects such as the Grail can also be found among the entries. Karr's summaries of each item are concise but nicely detailed, giving a well-rounded idea of the importance of the character, place, or object in the body of legend.

Besides the encyclopedic entries, the book includes some useful and interesting appendices. Many of these are essays on the cultural backdrop of the legends: "Arthurian Classes and Roles," "Holding Court," "Knighthood and Knight-errantry," or "Relations between Knights and Ladies," to name a few. Others are of a statistical nature: "A Tentative Chronology of Arthur's Reign," a list of all the known "Knights of the Round Table," "Time and Dates." There is even a map of Britain with speculated locations for many of the places mentioned in the legends. There is also a listing of the book divisions of Le Morte d'Arthur, with a one-line summary of the contents of each book. Within the encyclopedia portion of The Arthurian Companion, the entries for many of the knights include an illustration of that knight's coat of arms, taken from a medieval manuscript.

It would probably not be, by itself, the best introduction to the Matter of Britain for a reader unfamiliar with all things Arthurian. However, The Arthurian Companion makes an excellent resource for anyone who knows a little about Arthur and wishes to know more. Classes studying Malory or Chrétien will find it an invaluable aid for keeping all the names straight, as would anyone reading Arthurian works for their personal enjoyment. Writers making use of the Arthurian legends in their work can also benefit from the book's thorough and well-organized information. In short, I would heartily recommend it to anyone who takes an interest in the stories of King Arthur.