Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel in Warwickshire was a knight (i.e., a professional soldier), landholder, and member of Parliament who flourished in the middle of the 15th century. He was also something of a highwayman, and was charged and imprisoned for many crimes including extortion, robbery, burglary, and rape.

He died in Newgate Prison in 1471, where he had been mostly locked away since 1460. During this term of imprisonment, a philanthropic initiative allowed him access to the library at Grayfrairs monastery, whence he took he sources for what would become the first major work of English language prose, Le Morte d'Arthur, and where he would soon be laid to rest. These sources included Arthurian French romances, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, and two anonymous poems (the Alliterative Morte Arthure and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur).

William Caxton, the person who introduced the printing press to England, published Le Morte d'Arthur over a decade after Malory’s death, making several editorial changes to the text. For example, the work was originally titled The Book of King Arthur and His Noble Knights of the Round Table, and was divided into eight books; Caxton changed the name and repartitioned the work into 502 short chapters across 21 books.

There were six other men named Thomas Malory who were contemporaneous with Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, but none of them are likely to have written Le Morte d'Arthur. What little is known about Malory came to light via the Winchester Manuscript of Le Morte d'Arthur, discovered in 1934 by headmaster Oakeshott of Winchester College. This manuscript is thought to be closer to Malory’s original, revealing editorial license on the part of Caxton.