This edition reproduces “Bulfinch’s Mythology” in its entirety. It can be argued that no more accessible and comprehensive collection of the myths and legends of the western world exists than this work. Richard, Professor of History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, has praised “Bulfinch’s Mythology” as “one of the most popular books ever published in the United States and the standard work on classical mythology for nearly a century.” Consisting of prose retellings from three eras, “Bulfinch’s Mythology” relates the myths and legends of ancient Rome and Greece, the English tales of King Arthur, and the romances of the Middle Ages. provides lively versions of the myths of Zeus and Hera, Venus and Adonis, Daphne and Apollo, and their cohorts on Mount Olympus the love story of Pygmalion and Galatea the legends of the Trojan War and the epic wanderings of Ulysses and Aeneas the joys of Valhalla and the furies of Thor and the tales of Beowulf and Robin Hood.American author and banker Thomas Bulfinch is best known for his three separate works on mythology, “The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes”, “The Age of Chivalry, or Legends of King Arthur”, and “Legends of Charlemagne, or Romance of the Middle Ages” collectively entitled “Bulfinch’s Mythology,” which was first gathered together in one volume and published after his death in 1867.

For the Greek myths, Bulfinch drew on Ovid and Virgil, and for the sagas of the north, from Mallet's Northern Antiquities.

The stories are divided into three sections: The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes (first published in 1855) The Age of Chivalry (1858), which contains King Arthur and His Knights, The Mabinogeon, and The Knights of English History and The Legends of Charlemagne or The Romance of the Middle Ages (1863).

A series of private notes to himself grew into one of the single most useful and concise guides to literature and mythology. The forerunner of such interpreters as Edith Hamilton and Robert Graves, Thomas Bulfinch wanted to make these stories available to the general reader. For almost a century and a half, Bulfinch's Mythology has been the text by which the great tales of the gods and goddesses, Greek and Roman antiquity, Scandinavian, Celtic, and Oriental fables and myths, and the age of chivalry have been known.

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