John Bourchier, trans., The History of the Valiant Knight Arthur of Little Britain: A Romance of Chivalry, Originally Translated from the French, new ed. (London, 1814).
This is a translation of an anonymous fourteenth-century French prose romance, Artus de la Petite Bretagne, by John Bourchier (1467-1533). Bourchier's own manuscript is lost and the translation is extant as two sixteenth-century editions published c. 1555 and c. 1582. The original language (early Modern English) is preserved in this edition. The earliest extant manuscript of the French original is Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale 761 (14th century), but it is said that probably Bourchier did not consult fourteenth-century manuscripts but consulted pre-1533 French editions, only four of which are extant (they were published in 1493, 1496, 1509, and 1514) (Woods, p. ix).
The hero of the story, Arthur of Little Britain (or Brittany), is a son of Duke Johan of Brittany. He is named after King Arthur, and his lineage goes back to Lancelot. The story covers his life in 112 chapters, but he dies quite young, at the age of 32; it is a very long and detailed story (and I have not read it through). This work, as well as the translator himself, has been quite neglected in literary history, but it is said that it is one of the sources Edmund Spenser used for his Faerie Queene.
The translator, John Bourchier, is best known for his translation of Froissart's Chronicles, which he says he translated at Henry VIII's behest. It is also known that he translated another French romance, Huon de Bordeaux (Huon of Burdeux), as well as (a French version of) Diego de San Pedro's Carcel de amor (The Castell of Love), and Libro aureo de Marco Aurelio (The Golden Boke of Marcus Aurelius).
It is said that only 175 copies of this book were made, so it must be quite rare. My copy was owned by Hugh Robert Hughes of Kinmel and Dinorben, Esq (1827-1911) and was then owned by the Paolino Gerli Collection, Manhattan College, NYC. It is in a very heavy wooden-board binding somewhat looking like a medieval manuscript.
There are two doctoral dissertations dealing with this work:
George Emile Mitchell, 'A Textual Edition on Modern Principles of Arthur of Little Britain, A Romance of the Sixteenth Century Translated by John Bourchier, Lord Bernes', diss. University of Notre Dame, 1969.
Nancy Elizabeth Broom Woods, 'A Time of Transition: Studies in Lord Berner's "Arthur of Little Britain", diss. University of Southern Mississippi, 1986.
The former is mostly an edition of the work, while the latter is a study on the work, including a very lengthy summary of the story.
For the life and career of John Bourchier, see James P. Carley, 'Bourchier, John, second Baron Berners' in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.