From Ritual to Romance.

Cambridge: at The University Press,, 1920. I sat upon the shore / Fishing, with the arid plain behind me / Shall I at least set my lands in order?" (from The Waste Land) First edition, first impression, of this influential study of the Grail myth, read with zeal by modernist authors such as T. S. Eliot and Mary Butts and folkloric scholars alike. Weston was involved in a long-running academic debate regarding the origin of Arthurian tales, specifically the quest for the Holy Grail. The second chapter "The Task of the Hero" focuses in particular on the figure of the Fisher King presiding over a "Waste Land", and directly influenced Eliot while writing his modernist masterpiece. The present work, while courting controversy in its claims, proved immensely popular. Jessie Laidlay Weston (1850-1928) was an established translator and interpreter of medieval texts and was swiftly recognized as the leading English Arthurian scholar of her time. She accrued great academic respect and her research has been described as "prosecuted with that patience, zeal and love of the truth which are characteristic of the great scholar" (ODNB). Octavo. Original pale orange cloth-backed blue paper boards, spine lettered in blue, edges untrimmed. Spine browned, lettering a little rubbed, touch of wear to tips, top edge dust toned, a couple of faint marks to boards, faint offsetting to endpapers, occasional faint pencil mark to margins, annotation on p. 161 and p. 191 "summary of argument"; a very good copy.