This is an interesting book, but it is deeply, deeply unfocused. The basic idea is that it's a collection of potted biographies of writers who engage with Arthurian literature in a significant way. These biographies are only part of each chapter, however, as they are used to provide context and commentary on each writer's particular interpretation of the mythos. Each chapter is relatively short - I think the average is ten to twelve pages - so the chapter authors have to be careful with their balance in such a limited space, and some of them achieve this a lot better than others. Some chapters, like the excellent study on Mark Twain, seamlessly move between biography and criticism, and give a valuable commentary on the text in question (in Twain's case, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court). About half the chapters, however, wander enormously. Half-way through the chapter on C.S. Lewis, for example, the author comments that such-and-such is the last of Lewis' Arthurian writing, and meanders on for pages more describing Narnia, which had little of relevance to do with anything. I like Lewis' works, and love Narnia, but I picked up this book to get context for Arthurian narratives, and that's not always what I got.