The story of Parzival has exercised a powerful fascination for writers, artists, and thinkers ever since it was written in the early 13th century, yet the density and complexity of the poem have made it almost impenetrable to a wide readership, even in translation. This new version is lively, accessible, and inspirational, staying faithful to the spirit of the original while highlighting the contemporary relevance of its themes.

In presenting, for the first time, to English readers the greatest work of Germany's greatest mediæval poet, a few words of introduction, alike for poem and writer, may not be out of place. The lapse of nearly seven hundred years, and the changes which the centuries have worked, alike in language and in thought, would have naturally operated to render any work unfamiliar, still more so when that work was composed in a foreign tongue; but, indeed, it is only within the present century that the original text of the Parzivalhas been collated from the MSS. and made accessible, even in its own land, to the general reader. But the interest which is now felt by many in the Arthurian romances, quickened into life doubtless by the genius of the late Poet Laureate, and the fact that the greatest composer of our time, Richard Wagner, has selected this poem as the groundwork of that wonderful drama, which a growing consensus of opinion has hailed as the grandest artistic achievement of this century, seem to indicate that the time has come when the work of Wolfram von Eschenbach may hope to receive, from a wider public than that of his own day, the recognition which it so well deserves. Of the poet himself we know but little, save from the personal allusions scattered throughout his works; the dates of his birth and death are alike unrecorded, but the frequent notices of contemporary events to be found in his poems enable us to fix with tolerable certainty the period of his literary activity, and to judge approximately the outline of his life. Wolfram's greatest work, the Parzival, was apparently written within the early years of the thirteenth century; he makes constant allusions to events happening, and to works produced, within the first decade of that period; and as his latest work, the Willehalm, left unfinished, mentions as recent the death of the Landgrave Herman of Thuringia, which occurred in 1216, the probability seems to be that the Parzival was written within the first fifteen years of the thirteenth century. Inasmuch, too, as this work bears no traces of immaturity in thought or style, it is probable that the date of the poet's birth cannot be placed much later than 1170.

Parzival is the greatest of the medieval Grail romances. It tells of Parzival's growth from youthful folly to knighthood at the court of King Arthur, and of his quest for the Holy Grail. Cyril Edwards's fine translation also includes the fragments of Titurel, an elegiac offshoot of Parzival.

Presenting the ancient Holy Grail lineage from Asia and how the Knights Templar were initiated into it, this book reveals how ancient Asian wisdom became the foundation for the Holy Grail legend.

Soon after moving to the secluded Norfolk village of Munding, Alex Darken has a disturbing encounter with the ageing poet Edward Nesbit and his young lover Laura. They are obsessively researching the lives of Sir Henry Agnew and his daughter Louisa who lived in Munding in the nineteenth century and were deeply engaged in alchemical practices. By recovering the lost secret of the hermetic mysteries, Edward and Laura hope to find an alternative to the destructive materialism of the post-industrial world. Once drawn into their fervent quest for knowledge, Alex finds himself entangled in a passionate and intense intrigue that reaches across two centuries. A beautifully written, ambitious and captivating novel, which takes a profound look at issues of nature, human existence and forgotten knowledge, The Chymical Wedding, which won the 1989 Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, is already considered a classic for its stylistic prowess and philosophical resonances.

Graëlfire is a gripping new twist on Grail mythology. Based on the medieval legend of the Grail as a stone that fell from Heaven, the adventure is set in present-day Switzerland and medieval Occitania within a fictional cosmos where universes emerge from the cosmic soup of Graëlfire—the source of all Creation.