At about the same time that Twain was writing his version of the Arthurian legend in America, Great Britain's poet laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was working on his masterful poem about the same subject, Idylls of the King (begun in 1859, completed in 1885). Tennyson's version of the story is beautifully lush, dreamy, and considerably more reverent than Twain's version.

The version of the story of Camelot that Twain used as a basis for his novel was Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1485). In 2003, Cassel published a complete version of Malory's work called Le Morte D'Arthur: Complete, Unabridged, Illustrated Edition, which is edited by John Matthews and lushly illustrated by Anna Marie Ferguson.

Journalist T. H. White retold the story of King Arthur in his book The Once and Future King (1958), which made the tales accessible for modern readers. White's version became...