Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [575]
Traitor’s Sun
non-darkover science fiction:
The Door Through Space
The Ruins of Isis
Seven from the Stars
Survey Ship
The Dark Intruder and Other Stories
Warrior Woman
Falcons of Narabedla
The Endless Voyage
The Brass Dragon
The Endless Universe
Colors of Space
Hunters of the Red Moon
The Survivors
fantasy:
Night’s Daughter*
Drums of Darkness*
Lady of the Trillium*
House Between the Worlds*
The Inheritor
* Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
The Mists of Avalon
Marion Zimmer Bradley
A Reader’s Guide
A Letter from Diana L. Paxson
Marion Zimmer Bradley died on September 25, 1999. During the week after her passing, my in-box filled to overflowing with messages from people who mourned her. They came from women and men, science fiction fans and pagans, Anachronists and people from all of the many other communities who appreciated her many novels; but above all, they came from readers who loved The Mists of Avalon.
In Marion, I lost not only a favorite author, but a sister and a friend. I had known her for over thirty years, and when I married her adopted brother, writer Jon DeCles, I became part of her family. For many years my husband and I shared a house with her brother Paul Edwin Zimmer (also a fantasy writer) and his family, and her mother lived with us until she died.
Marion read my first attempt at a novel, and read it again after I followed her advice and rewrote it. We worked together as priestesses in the Women’s Spirituality movement and founded Darkmoon Circle, which is still going strong today. Once I had become established as a writer, we traded ideas and manuscripts. When she wanted to do an anthology of work by people associated with our extended family and virtual writer’s colony, she named it after my house, Greyhaven.
But when Marion first announced her intention to do an Arthurian novel I was skeptical. Surely, after T. H. White and Rosemary Sutcliffe’s modern treatments of the story, there was nothing left to be said. Nonetheless, she knew that I had specialized in medieval literature in graduate school, and when she came to me for resources, I was glad to give what help I could. Not that she needed much, for she had been steeped in the Arthurian tradition since childhood.
I read the first chapters of what became The Mists of Avalon with a mounting excitement, for Marion had, indeed, found a new approach to the legend, one with particular relevance to the culture of the day. But I should not have been surprised—one of Marion’s great gifts as a writer was to say something, at just the right time, that some group of people very much needed to hear. This time, it was an exploration of the role of the women in the legend of King Arthur—and in her hands, it became a deeply evocative story of women’s struggles to survive in a masculine world.
In particular, it was a story of a woman’s spiritual quest. The spirituality of Avalon derives from the British Mystery tradition, especially as it was interpreted by the occult writer Dion Fortune, whose character, Miss LeFay Morgan, is both a progenitor and descendant of Morgaine. In addition, Marion drew upon Dion Fortune’s nonfiction book, Avalon of the Heart. For a time, Dion Fortune lived in Glastonbury, home of the Glastonbury Tor and still a sacred center of pilgrimage for many.
Although Marion traveled to the British Isles several times to visit Arthurian sites and do research, she realized early on that in order to be true to her vision she would have to abandon history, and instead, tell the truth of legend. The brilliant device of placing Avalon halfway between our world and Faerie allowed her to adorn it with structures and a society unknown to archaeology.
The Arthurian legend holds a unique place in the literature of the English language and seems to be capable of infinite reinterpretations. My own version, Hallowed Isle, is more faithful to history, but The Mists of Avalon casts a long shadow, which I avoided only by placing my priestesses in the Lake Country in the north of England!
For years