No other edition accurately represents the actual (and likely authorial)
divisions of the text as attested to by its two surviving
witnesses--Caxton's 1485 print and, especially, the famous Winchester
Manuscript. The Winchester Manuscript is now generally agreed to be the
more authentic of the two earlier texts. The Norton Critical Edition is
the first edition of Malory to recover important elements of this
manuscript: paragraphing marginal annotations hierarchies of narrative
division as signaled by size and decorative intricacy of initial
capitals and font changes The Norton Critical Edition also represents,
in black-letter font, the striking rubrication of proper names in the
Winchester Manuscript, reconstructing for readers something of an
authentic medieval reading experience, one which gives visual support to
Malory's extraordinary representation, in character and setting, of a
chivalric ideal. No other student edition of Malory contains such
extensive contextual and critical support.