The Forest House, although connected with Arthurian and heroic matters, is an historical, not a fantasy, novel. It is not really heroic or epic in the sense of dealing with great nobles and heroes.

The characters here are all commoners — Roman officials, perhaps, and Druid priests, but not princes or princesses.

Its precedents are in practical histories and accounts — Tacitus, who appears as a character, and Julius Caesar, especially Book V of the Conquests, which recounts his first and second invasions (55-54 BC), and the legends of early Christian missionaries and saints from the Chronicles.

The "matter of Britain," of which the "matter of Keltia" is a part, informs both mainstream and marginalized literatures. The Arthurian legends and their reinterpretations in different places and eras (Spenser's Faerie Queene, 1589-1596) are the background, as are even more so the Celtic sagas and heroic tales &mdash...