Lancelot: The Adventures of King Arthur's Most Celebrated Knight

by Christine Chaundler, Thomas Mackenzie (Illustrator), Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale (Illustrator)

Following the legendary tales associated with celebrated Round Table knight Sir Lancelot, a richly illustrated volume retells such events as his childhood kidnapping by the Lady of the Lake and his romance with the Lily Maid of Astolat.

Genres: Fiction

206 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

A prolific British children's author, Christine Chaundler was born in 1887 in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, the daughter of solicitor Henry Chaundler, and his wife, Constance Julia Thompson. She was educated at Queen Anne's School, in Caversham, until the age of sixteen, whereupon she attended St. Winifred's School in Llanfairfechan, Wales. She served briefly in the Land Army, during WWI, but otherwise worked in an editorial capacity for a variety of publishers, until her writing career was capable of supporting her, financially.

Chaundler's first work was published in 1912, when she won a poetry contest, and she went on to write many children's novels, for both boys and girls, as well as numerous short stories for various magazines. Her girls' stories were published under her own name, and her boys' stories under the pen-name Peter Martin.

Interestingly, In a census of young girls conducted by the Western Mail in 1927 she ranked sixth among popular authors. Although she was bested by Dickens, Shakespeare, and Kipling, she was listed above Louisa Alcott and Robert Louis Stevenson.

She died on 15 December 1972, aged 85, at Fittleworth, Sussex.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edited for kids to some extent, but there are a lot of big words in here, must be for educated kids! Still I would have loved this as a series of bedtime stories or as a middle grade reader.

[Abigail · Rating 1 out of 5]

This probably should have been a DNF but it was a gift, and I really wanted to love it. But just no. Why is Arthur's round table so romanticized? It is full of adultery and witchcraft. Lancelot's devotion to Guinevere is not called chivalry, it's called an affair. Granted, the book was "cleaned up" for kids, but to the point where this was praised. Apparently, it's ok to have an affair if you're faithful to the person with whom you're having the affair. Then the witchcraft combined with medieval Roman Catholic superstition just wasn't awesome. In the effort to glamorize Lancelot, the book also skipped over the fact that Galahad was the illegitimate son of Lancelot. There were also just quite a few depressing stories that were the result of bad choices. Not legends I'm going to encourage my kids to study.

[Iriah · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved this

[Cws]

JC-Cha