Editing T. H. White (section)

==Writing==
White's novel ''Earth Stopped'' (1934) and its sequel ''Gone to Ground'' (1935) are science fiction novels about a disaster that devastates the world. ''Gone to Ground'' contains several fantasy stories told by the survivors that were later reprinted in ''The Maharajah and Other Stories''.<ref name="bs">[[Brian Stableford|Stableford, Brian]] ''The A to Z of Fantasy Literature'', (p 429), Scarecrow Press, Plymouth. 2005. {{ISBN|0-8108-6829-6}}</ref>

White wrote to a friend that, in autumn 1937, "I got desperate among my books and picked [Malory] up in lack of anything else. Then I was thrilled and astonished to find that (a) The thing was a perfect tragedy, with a beginning, a middle and an end implicit in the beginning and (b) the characters were real people with recognizable reactions which could be forecast.&nbsp;... Anyway, I somehow started writing a book."<ref name="lett"/>

The novel, which White described as "a preface to Malory",<ref name="lett"/> was titled ''[[The Sword in the Stone (novel)|The Sword in the Stone]]'' and published in 1938, telling the story of the boyhood of King Arthur.<ref name="irwin">[[Robert Irwin (writer)|Robert Irwin]], "White, T(erence) H(anbury)" in the ''St. James Guide To Fantasy Writers'', ed. [[David Pringle]], St. James Press, 1996, {{ISBN|1-55862-205-5}}, p. 607–8</ref> White was also influenced by [[Sigmund Freud|Freudian]] psychology and his own lifelong involvement in natural history. ''The Sword in the Stone'' was critically well-received and was a [[Book of the Month Club]] selection in 1939.<ref name="nyobit"/>

In February 1939, White moved to Doolistown in [[County Meath]], Ireland, where he lived out the [[Second World War]] as a ''de facto'' [[conscientious objector]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://jeyers.phlipped.co.uk/arthur2.php|title=The Importance of The Second World War to T. H. White's "Once and Future King"|access-date=30 April 2008|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080529061417/http://jeyers.phlipped.co.uk/arthur2.php|archive-date=29 May 2008|df=dmy-all}}</ref> In Ireland, he wrote most of what became ''The Once and Future King'': ''The Witch in the Wood'' (later cut and rewritten as ''[[The Queen of Air and Darkness]]'') in 1939, and ''[[The Ill-Made Knight]]'' in 1940. The version of ''The Sword in the Stone'' included in ''The Once and Future King'' differs from the earlier version; it is darker, and some critics prefer the earlier version.<ref name="Keenan">Keenan, Hugh T. “T(erence) H(anbury) White” in ''British Children's Writers, 1914–1960'', ed. Donald R. Hettinga and Gary D. Schmidt, Gale Research, 1996.</ref>