Of the various great matters of Western literature—the story of Troy, the legend of Charlemagne, the tales of Araby—none has more profoundly captured the imagination of English civilization than the saga of its own imperial dream, the romance of King Arthur and the Round Table….

The story of Arthur traditionally begins as the story of male lust….

In "The Mists of Avalon," Marion Zimmer Bradley's monumental reimagining of the Arthurian legends, the story begins differently, in the slow stages of female desire and of moral, even mythic, choice. Stepping into this world through the Avalon mists, we see the saga from an entirely untraditional perspective: not Arthur's, not Lancelot's, not Merlin's. We see the creation of Camelot from the vantage point of its principal women—Viviane, Gwenhwyfar, Morgaine and Igraine. This, the untold Arthurian story, is no less tragic, but it has gained a mythic coherence; reading it is a deeply moving and at times uncanny experience.

In Mrs. Bradley's novel Viviane is the Lady of the Lake, High Priestess of Avalon and sister of the Lady Igraine. In a vision granted by the Great Goddess, Viviane has foreseen a Britain united in peace under a high king who will remain true to Avalon and the old religion of pagan Goddess worship while tolerating the new religion of the male Christ that is now winning its way across the land. Viviane accordingly chooses her sister, Igraine, to give birth to this future king, Arthur. She also chooses and trains Morgaine, Igraine's daughter and therefore Arthur's half-sister, to succeed her as priestess of the mysteries of Avalon. However, Viviane's plan to insure a doubly royal heir for Arthur goes awry: She selects Morgaine as the priestess-virgin to be deflowered in the primitive ritual Arthur must carry out to become king. Horrified to learn that this incestuous union with her half-brother has made her pregnant, Morgaine leaves Avalon, abandoning her duty as High Priestess and sowing the seed of future tragedy. Thus Mrs. Bradley gives us a plot behind the plot of the Arthurian story as we have known it. (p. 11)

The more traditional story too is all here in … "The Mists of Avalon": all the jousts, tourneys and battles. And all the familiar romance and sexual desire is here, with some new additions….

What [Mrs. Bradley] has done here is reinvent the underlying mythology of the Arthurian legends. It is an impressive achievement. Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Celtic and Orphic stories are all swirled into a massive narrative that is rich in events placed in landscapes no less real for often being magical. Nor is it a surprise to find at this time a rewriting of the "matter of Britain" from the female perspective…. Looking at the Arthurian legend from the other side, as in one of Morgaine's magic weavings, we see all the interconnecting threads, not merely the artful pattern….

In Mrs. Bradley's version, Morgaine finally learns that she is herself the Goddess, herself the Fairy Queen. In this recognition, "The Mists of Avalon" harks back to the 14-century "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," one of the first and perhaps the most perfect Arthurian poem in English; only at its end do we discover that the scheme to test Gawain's chastity and temper the pride of Arthur's court, which is the central story of the poem, has been Morgan's. Suddenly to bring in Morgan has often seemed to scholars a cheat in an otherwise flawless poem. "The Mists of Avalon" rewrites Arthur's story so that we realize it has always also been the story of his sister, the Fairy Queen. (p. 30)