The first book John Steinbeck read as a child was the Caxton Morte d'Arthur, and he considered it one of the most challenging tasks of his career to modernize the stories of King Arthur. "These stories are alive even in those of us who have not read them. And, in our day, we are perhaps impatient with the words and the stately rhythms of Malory. I wanted to set the stories down in meaning as they were written, leaving out nothing and adding nothing."Also included are the letters John Steinbeck wrote to his literary agent, Elizabeth Otis, and to Chase Horton, the editor of this volume, about his work on King Arthur. John Steinbeck (1902-1968) was the author of many books, including Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, East of Eden, In Dubious Battle, and The Grapes of Wrath (which won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1939). In 1962, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The first book John Steinbeck read as a child was the Caxton Morte d'Arthur, and he considered it one of the most challenging tasks of his career to modernize the stories of King Arthur. As the author notes in his introduction to The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights: "These stories are alive even in those of us who have not read them. And, in our day, we are perhaps impatient with the words and