Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Faber and Faber. London: Faber and Faber, 2007 Small 8vo., black publisher's boards lettered in silver along the backstrip, with faber device to foot; unclipped pictorial dust jacket (£12.99) featuring illustrations by Bevis Martin; blue endpapers; pp. [iv], v-ix, [v], 5-114, [iv]; aside from a couple of very small corner creases at the prelims; fine.   First edition of Armitage's most sought after interpretation of chivalric romance. This copy signed by the poet to the title page.  Penned some 600 years ago, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was originally written in alliterative verse in Middle English, and drew on Welsh, English and French traditions to present one of the best-known Arthurian stories. Armitage's rendering into modern English is one of the most popular adaptations, following Tolkien's scholarly edition of 1925. While Tolkien intended to open up the work to new fields of study, including an extensive glossary and notes, Armitage takes a different tack: "this is not an exercise in linguistic forensics", he writes in his introduction, "the intention has always been to produce a living, inclusive and readable piece of work. in other words, the ambition has been poetry. "  . Fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. 1st Printing. 2007.