Arthurian Writers

Laura Cooner Lambdin is a Lecturer in Management at the University of South Carolina's Moore School of Business. With Robert Thomas Lambdin, she has published Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature (2000), Chaucer's Pilgrims (1996), A Companion to Jane Austen Studies (2000), A Companion to Old and Middle English Literature (2002), and Camelot in the Nineteenth Century (2000), all available from Greenwood Press.Robert Thomas Lambdin teaches in the Management Department at the University of South Carolina's Moore School of Business. With Laura Cooner Lambdin, he has published Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature (2000), Chaucer's Pilgrims (1996), A Companion to Jane Austen Studies (2000), A Companion to Old and Middle English Literature (2002), and Camelot in the Nineteenth Century (2000), all available from Greenwood Press.

This work is an easily accessible volume of literary biographies of Arthurian writers from Gildas (c. 490-570 CE) to Margaret Atwood (b. 1939). The editors have selectively chosen some of the major contributors to Arthurian fiction, from the medieval greats such as Geoffrey of Monmouth and Sir Thomas Malory, to more modern writers such as Marion Zimmer Bradley and the comparatively underrated Mary Stewart. The introduction offers an overview of the Arthurian story and its development through the ages, and an appended (if completely tangential) chapter on Arthurian art. Each entry is necessarily brief (there are 34 entries in 363 pages), but they do detail the author's life, writings, Arthuriana, and influence on the development of the Arthurian story. Some authors earn more space than others, but the encyclopedia's contributors provide good bibliographies of primary and secondary readings. The entry on Malory, for example, does a good job of detailing the academic discourse about who he was and what he wrote, and cites the major editions of his works and the essential secondary resources to begin further study. Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and general readers.