The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White, the first book of The Once and Future King, is a novel about a young boy named Wart (who, as we suspect all along, but only find out for sure at the end, is actually the future King Arthur) who befriends a magician named Merlyn. It was published in 1938. The title refers to a sword that was magically embedded in a stone (or in an anvil) and which only the future, true-born king of England would be able to remove.

The premise of the book is that Arthur's youth, not dealt with in Malory, was a time when he was tutored by Merlyn, in preparation for the use of power, and his royal life. This though is somewhat too heavy a description. While Merlyn magically turns Wart into various animals at times, he also has more normal adventures. In one of these adventures he meets the outlaw Robin Wood (sic). The setting of the story is an idealised picture of medieval England, and in places it incorporates White's considerable knowledge of medieval culture (as in relation to hunting, falconry and jousting). The novel, however, makes no attempt at consistent historical accuracy, and incorporates some obvious anachronisms (aided by the concept that Merlyn lives backwards in time rather than forwards like everyone else).

The version appearing in 1959 in the tetralogy was substantially revised, partly to incorporate events and themes that White had originally intended to cover in a fifth volume (which was finally published after his death, as The Book of Merlyn). To this end, the revised version includes several new sequences and leaves out some of the sequences that had appeared in the original (notably the sequence that was the basis of the Mad Madam Mim scenes in the Disney film).

However, the consensus of critical opinion is that the revised version was actually inferior to the original. Publishers have more recently gone back to using the original version, at least when it is published independently of the tetralogy.

Presumably the reason why White did this was that The Sword in the Stone is basically a rather whimsical treatment of the boyhood of King Arthur, although brilliantly written. However it was awkward to treat it as the first part of a more serious treatment of the Arthurian legend. White is an example, along with Jerome K. Jerome and Compton Mackenzie, of a serious writer who became best remembered for a comical work.

Walt Disney Productions made an animated movie version of The Sword in the Stone, first released on December 25, 1963 by Buena Vista Distribution. Like most Disney films, it is based on the general plot of the original story, but much of the substance of the story is considerably changed.

A BBC radio adaptation in 1982 starred Michael Hordern as Merlyn. Hordern had already starred as another great literary wizard, Tolkien's Gandalf, in the BBC's Lord of the Rings (1981).

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