This note provides, for future critical editions of Malory, the results of a collation of the two texts with regard to the two kinds of articles.

The purpose of this short note is to present exhaustively the textual variants of the definite as against the indefinite articles that exist between the Winchester Malory (hereafter W) and Caxton's Malory (hereafter C).

First let me point out that the third edition (1990), revised by Professor P.J.C. Field, of Vinaver's Works of Sir Thomas Malory (hereafter V–F) contains an emendation that is concerned with the variant readings referred to above, and which is not included in the previous editions. The passage in point reads: V–F ‘and [the] dwarffe ran by her syde’ 1212.29. The word in square brackets (italics mine) shows that it has been borrowed from C's reading, which runs: C ‘and the dwerf ranne by her syde’ 832.2.

In Vinaver's first edition (1947), the second edition (1967), and the corrected impression of the second edition (1973), the above passage remains not emended and reads thus as it stands in W: ‘and a dwarffe ran by her syde’ 1212.29. More recently (1998), Professor Helen Cooper's abridged and modern-spelling edition of W(hereafter HC) was published. In this edition, in addition to the above instance in V–F, at least three more of W's definite or indefinite articles are found to have been emended, though silently without any emendatory marks, on the basis of C's readings.