Once and Future King (White) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

[An] impressive work of literature, a far more remarkable flight of imagination, than readers of the earlier versions of The Sword in the Stone, The Witch in the Wood...and The Ill-made Knight could have guessed it would finally be....Mr. White has concluded his dealings with King Arthur by giving us much more than fun. Thought follows laughter..
Ben Ray Redman - New York Times (8/24/58)


Reading these enchanted pages, laughing at their wild comedy, smiling at their ironic humor, delighting in their revelation of the beauty and wonder of life in...once might conclude too soon that this is only an inspire and irreverent reworking of Thomas Malory. But the deeper one penetrates into Mr. White's Forest Sauvage the more one is aware of unseen presences, of dark broodings on the mysteries of human character, the tragic failures of high hopes and the relentless doom that drives men to kill each other in unending wars.
Orville Prescott - New York Times (8/25/1958)


[T]the single finest fantasy novel written in our time, or for that matter, ever written, is, must be, by any conceivable standard, T. H. White's The Once and Future King. I can hardly imagine that any mature, literate person who has read the book would disagree with this estimate. White is a great writer.
Len Carter (fantasy historian and writer)