Just before New Year, what a lovely surprise in the mail: a proof copy of Magical Tales from French Camelot, my forthcoming book with the fantastic Lorena Carrington! To be published by Serenity Press in March 2022, it features my original translations and retellings of some great French Arthurian classic tales from the Middle Ages, principally stories by the great twelfth-century French writers Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France, illustrated by absolutely superb pictures by Lorena. It’s so good to be able to leaf through this first copy–looking wonderful!
By the way, the book is for adults and teenagers–certainly not for ‘7 plus’ as some websites have it.
Illustration by Lorena Carrington for ‘The Boy in the Forest, the Girl in the Wasteland, and the Fisher King’, from Magical Tales from French Camelot.
More lovely book news, and another gorgeous cover reveal: this time for my forthcoming book with Lorena Carrington, Magical Tales from French Camelot, which will be out late this year, with Serenity Press. Like French Fairy Tales, our previous title together, it focusses on stories from the French tradition, this time from the Middle Ages, and the extraordinary work of the great Arthurian writers of the twelfth century in France. My new translations and retellings of some of my favourites of these stories are accompanied by Lorena’s glorious, enchanting and atmospheric illustrations, like the beautiful one on the cover below. It has been an unalloyed joy and pleasure to work with Lorena again and we are both delighted to be published again by the fantastic team at Serenity Press.
Here’s a bit more about the book:
The legend of King Arthur began in Britain. But it is in twelfth-century France that the stories really took off, with gifted writers creating a panoply of vivid new characters and elements such as Lancelot, Perceval, the Grail and the doomed love between Lancelot and Guinevere, within a richly imagined, action-packed world of adventure, magic, romance and mystery. Women as much as men are important characters in the French stories, there’s an intriguing take on shapeshifters and other supernatural beings, and fascinating glimpses of the patterns and customs of medieval life as well as explorations of conscience and the true nature of courage. In the process these extraordinary medieval writers, such as Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France, created a whole new immensely popular genre of literature whose appeal and influence endures to this day.
This beautiful new collection of stories translated and retold by Sophie Masson and illustrated by Lorena Carrington will introduce you to some of the most striking tales and extraordinary characters and places from the French Arthurian tradition, transporting you into a gripping, magical world like no other.
Feathers of the Firebird 