Heroes & Kings
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About this ebook
Heroes and Kings was designed by Hubert J. Foss, and the wood engravings were made by Norman Janes. Three hundred copies, of which two hundred and fifty were for sale, were printed in the year 1930. Out of print since then, the Charles Williams Society and the Apocryphile Press are proud to present this new edition. Charles Williams was one of the finest-not to mention one of the most unusual-theologians of the twentieth century. His mysticism is palpable-the unseen world interpenetrates ours at every point, and spiritual exchange occurs all the time, unseen and largely unlooked for. His novels are legend, and as a member of the Inklings, he contributed to the mythopoetic revival in contemporary culture.
Charles Williams
Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886 1945) was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian and literary critic. Most of his life was spent in London, where he was born, but in 1939 he moved to Oxford with the university press for which he worked and was buried there following his early death.Charles Williams was born in London in 1886, the only son of (Richard) Walter Stansby Williams (18481929) and Mary (née Wall). His father Walter was a journalist and foreign business correspondent for an importing firm, writing in French and German, who was a 'regular and valued' contributor of verse, stories and articles to many popular magazines. His mother Mary, the sister of the ecclesiologist and historian J. Charles Wall, was a former milliner (hatmaker),[4] of Islington. He had one sister, Edith, born in 1889. The Williams family lived in 'shabby-genteel' circumstances, owing to Walter's increasing blindness and the decline of the firm by which he was employed, in Holloway. In 1894 the family moved to St Albans in Hertfordshire, where Williams lived until his marriage in 1917.
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Heroes & Kings - Charles Williams
HEROES & KINGS
By CHARLES WILLIAMS
With Wood Engravings by Norman Janes
Apocryphile Press
1700 Shattuck Ave #81
Berkeley, CA 94709
www.apocryphilepress.com
ISBN 978-1-937002-20-6
eISBN 978-1-949643-93-0
Ebook version 1
Apocryphile edition, 2013. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Heroes and Kings was designed by Hubert J. Foss, and the wood engravings were made by Norman Janes. Three hundred copies, of which two hundred and fifty were for sale, were printed in the year 1930, on Barcham Green hand-made paper, in eighteen-point Monotype Caslon, by Henderson and Spalding Ltd., Sylvan Grove, Camberwell, London, S.E. 15
I N T R O D U C T I O N
The re-publication of Heroes and Kings, from a 1930 limited edition, is a chance to bring to light the not-widely-read Arthurian poems of Charles Williams (1886-1945), giving his fans a reason to rejoice – perhaps in song. Williams’s other Arthurian poems, Taliessen at Logres (1938) and The Region of the Summer Stars (1944), received critical accolades from CS Lewis, Agnes Sibley, and others. This re-publication can bring these earlier poems to an equal footing.
The legends of King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Gawain, Galahad, and Mordred and Morgan Le Fay are familiar to most everyone, and Charles Williams was interested in the Arthurian epic myth for much of his life. He did his research and studied the matter in great depth, not only writing poems in the style of that time but writing versions of the tale in the posthumously published the Arthurian Torso (1969). Considered a difficult novelist by some, Williams demands one have a familiarity with historic writing styles as well as British history itself to best understand his poetry.
It is still a matter of debate whether Arthur himself was a historical figure. Mike Ashley writes in his historical take King Arthur that there were many Arthurs
and that it was a common name for English monarchs, thus it is hard to find a common source for the legends. That leaves Arthwys of the Pennines and Cadell of the Gleaming Hilt
he writes. "Arthwys was definitely in the right place at the right time and with his son’s ‘Great Host’ could have marshaled a formidable army. Cadell became the ancestor of the rulers of Powys and his line ruled for the next 300 years. He won back this kingdom after having lost everything.
"Could the activities of Arthwys and Cadell have been the start of the Arthurian legend? After this quest through the dark corridors of history of strikes was entirely possible.
That's my conclusion. What are yours?
Ashley theorizes that the kernel of the story may have been based on a historical person, but the myth has given life to a character who was symbolic, flawed and multifaceted, but fought and dreamed of a better world. He strove to bring peace to his country, even if temporarily; and his colleagues at Camelot have also since become cultural icons.
It is difficult to know how to interpret the tale. In our youth we reveled in chivalric adventures, playing with wooden swords and seeking to be worthy knights. There may even have been damsels waiting to be rescued by their knights in