P.J.C. Field, Professor of English at the University of Wales (Bangor), is a distinguished Arthurian scholar and Vice-President of the International Arthurian Society. Although he is an expert in medieval literature in general, much of his scholarly life has been devoted to Malory's Le Morte Darthur. Many of his most important articles have been reprinted in Malory: Texts and Sources (1998). Among many articles and other contributions to Malory studies, three works may be singled out. His Romance and Chronicle: A Study of Sir Thomas Malory's Prose Style (1971) was the first comprehensive analysis of the features of Malory's distinctive style. In The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory (1993), Professor Field uses several previously unexamined documents to probe Malory's personal, social, and political contexts. He offered a new identification of Malory himself; it attracted considerable attention, described in the Literary Review as ‘a tour de force of scholarship and detective work. … So good it sets the mind racing’. Finally, his 1990 revised version of Eugène Vinaver's The Works of Malory is a prelude to the comprehensive new edition of Malory that he is now preparing.

It is with pleasure that the contributors of the twenty-eight essays in this volume seek to mark Professor Field's contribution to Arthurian scholarship in particular – but beyond this we (along with the signatories of the tabula gratulatoria) wish to honour him as a learned and generous scholar who has been a reliable and kind guide to neophyte and expert alike.