The French romance of Perceforest is a work of exceptional richness and importance, creating a prehistory of King Arthur's Britain and an ancestry of all the major Arthurian figures – Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot and many more. But it is much more than a mere prelude to more familiar tales. It is a magnificent epic story in its own right, and offers a wealth of intriguing material to all medievalists – to historians as well as Arthurian enthusiasts: it has, indeed, been justly described as ‘a veritable encyclopaedia of fourteenth-century chivalry’ and ‘a mine of folkloric motifs’. But in the field of Arthurian literature it has been relatively little known, and the words ‘encyclopaedia’ and ‘mine’ may give a hint at the reason: another notable feature of Perceforest is its extraordinary length. It is composed of six books, each the length of a substantial novel – the shortest is as long as Moby Dick.

A complete account of this vast romance, including a full translation of all key passages, has now been made available by D. S. Brewer, first published in 2011. This ‘Sampler’ is a selection of episodes from that edition, and is intended as a simple introduction to the work, a work of such variety and imaginative scope that it would have been quite possible to assemble four or five compilations. The hope is that it gives a tempting indication of Perceforest's wide range of tone – comic, tragic, realistic, fantastic – and of theme: in its exploration of ideas about love, magic, religion, women, kingship and the code of chivalry, Perceforest gives remarkable insights into the medieval mind.