1470

1470 is the year in which Sir Thomas Malory says he completed Le Morte Darthur, identifying it as the ninth year of Edward IV’s reign. The date locates the making of the book within a recoverable late-medieval present, even as the work’s Arthurian past unfolds in a geography and chronology the preface describes as largely legendary.

The Date and Malory

Malory’s closing statement dates the book to the ninth year of Edward IV, corresponding to 1470. The preface treats this as the firmest biographical fact available about its author: little else about Sir Thomas Malory can be established beyond what may be inferred from the book. His name appears in three forms—Malorye, Malory, and Maleore—reflecting the period’s variable spelling. The year therefore serves as a precise point of reference amid substantial uncertainty about the writer himself.

The date is also attached to a devotional appeal. In the book’s conclusion, Malory asks readers to pray for him while he is alive and, after his death, to pray for his soul, ending with a profession of service to Jesus. That closing request joins the practical record of composition to the religious language through which the author presents himself.

The Arthurian Past and Historical Uncertainty

The preface distinguishes the date of composition from the historical status of the events Malory relates. Its author declines to decide whether Arthur actually existed, noting that recent critics favored belief in Arthur’s historical reality over Milton’s skepticism. Malory’s so-called historical chapters appear to draw mainly on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Brithonum, though some of the material also occurs in romances.

The account of Arthur’s march to Rome is singled out as unusually accurate in its route. The preface suggests that Malory may have known the road, which would have been familiar to soldiers, priests, and merchants in Edward IV’s time. Beyond that exception, however, it says the book’s history and geography cannot be brought within historical limits: events succeed one another in a legendary heroic past rather than a verifiable chronology.

That contrast is visible in the narrative’s movements between Tintagil, St. Alban’s, London, Carlion, and Camelot. Carlion appears to shift between Caerleon-upon-Usk and other places, while Camelot is variously associated with Wales, Avelion or Glastonbury, and Winchester. The preface reads these changes not as a stable itinerary but as evidence of the romance’s imaginative geography, which sets aside ordinary limits of place and time.

The Date in the History of the Book

The year 1470 marks the completion claimed within Malory’s work, not its first printed appearance. Caxton printed the first edition at Westminster in 1485, fifteen years later. Only two copies of that edition were known to the preface’s author: the Osterley copy, described as complete, and the Althorp copy, which lacked eleven leaves later supplied in facsimile.

The distinction between composition and publication matters because later printings altered the text. Wynkyn de Worde’s editions appeared in 1498 and 1529; subsequent editions continued to depart from Caxton’s. The 1634 black-letter edition, for example, remodeled the preface, divided the work into three parts, modernized spelling and wording, and introduced extensive variations and additions. Thus 1470 identifies the work’s asserted moment of completion, while the text encountered by later readers was shaped by a long and uneven print history.

Recovery of the Earlier Text

Nineteenth-century editing made the relationship between Malory’s completion date and the surviving printed text more difficult to assess. Southey’s 1817 edition claimed to reprint Caxton’s first edition exactly, but its source copy lacked eleven leaves. The replacement passages differed from Caxton’s text and were taken chiefly from Wynkyn de Worde’s 1498 edition, with some alterations. Because those passages were presented without adequate notice, critics quoted them for decades as though they were genuine Caxton readings.

The preface’s author says that collating the texts exposed the substitutions and traced their sources. A more extensive scholarly edition followed in 1889–91, when H. Oskar Sommer published Caxton’s text alongside collations, bibliography, an index, a glossary, and an essay on the language. In this editorial history, 1470 remains a stable claim about when Malory finished his work, but recovering what that completed work said requires distinguishing it from the changes introduced by printers and editors.