Conversation #25: School's Out (December 3, 2017)

Today we have a podcast in two parts, recorded separately. In part one, Grace has some thoughts about the controversies over Ypsilanti’s Washtenaw International Middle Academy, and also talks about an article from Psychology Today which discusses the concept of social capital in the fight against bullying in schools. In the second part, Paul talks some more about one of the books that shaped his young mind, T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone.

How to Listen

You can find the MP3 file here.

The Podcast feed is here.

The Podcast channel on YouTube is here.

More Information

Here’s an article from the Ann Arbor News about the school.

Here’s the article from Psychology Today about bullying and social capital.

Note that as far as I can tell, there are three versions of the text of The Sword in the Stone. The 1938 text is the text of the first edition published by Collins. There’s also a 1939 text found in the Putnam and Sons American Edition.

The 1938 text has Madame Mim in a magical wizard battle with Merlyn, featured in the Disney cartoon adaptation, and also features a huge battle scene with Robin Wood. Both of these elements are toned down in the 1939 text.

I think the edition I originally read back in grade school was the 1963 Dell/Laurel Leaf movie tie-in edition, a mass-market paperback with a purple cover featuring artwork from the movie. This version has the 1938 text. I now have a later reprint of that book.

There is also a version of the text from 1958, which is the text White included in The Once and Future King. The actual edition of The Sword in the Stone I recently read to my kids was the 1964 Time Life trade paperback edition with a wrap-around painting of a knight in chain-mail armor, holding a shield; this edition has the 1958 version of the text, even though it was published as a standalone book.

I should warn readers that all the editions contain the n-word in one or more places, depending on the version (talk about anachronisms!)

The revisions for the 1958 text seem to have come about in part because White could not get the publisher to include The Book of Merlyn, which included some animal transformation adventures for an older Arthur, with anti-fascist, anti-nationalist, anti-war themes. So White took some of the anti-war episodes from The Book of Merlyn and reworked them into the first book.

The Book of Merlyn was eventually published after White’s death, which means if you read all of The Once and Future King followed by The Book of Merlyn, you will find that The Book of Merlyn has some redundant chapters.

If you think this situation, with the various editions, is complicated and doesn’t do proper credit to White, you’re right, especially since the older editions seem to all be out of print. I think the 1938 text of The Sword in the Stone really deserves a new edition, with a nice introductory essay explaining the textual revisions, and an appendix containing the 1939 revisions.

This blog post discusses the different editions.

Finally, in reading up on these revisions, I discovered that the second book in The Once and Future King omnibus, The Queen of Air and Darkness, also had a much different earlier edition called The Witch in the Wood. This is also a shame. I’m probably not going to spend over $100 on a fragile vintage copy in order to read this version — although I am tempted!