The plan he followed in this work, to give it the greatest possible usefulness, is set forth in the Author’s Preface. His leisure time he used for further pursuit of the classical studies which he had begun at Harvard, and his chief pleasure in life lay in writing out the results of his reading, in simple, condensed form for young or busy readers. For a long time later in life he was employed as an accountant in the Boston Merchants’ Bank. He finished his scholastic training at Harvard College, and after taking his degree was for a period a teacher in his home city. His boyhood was spent in that city, and he prepared for college in the Boston schools. Thomas Bulfinch was a native of Boston, Mass., where he was born in 1796.
Yet to the majority of this great circle of readers and students the name Bulfinch in itself has no significance. Many readers of the present edition will probably recall coming in contact with the work as children, and, it may be added, will no doubt discover from a fresh perusal the source of numerous bits of knowledge that have remained stored in their minds since those early years. “The Age of Fable” has come to be ranked with older books like “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” “The Arabian Nights,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and five or six other productions of world-wide renown as a work with which every one must claim some acquaintance before his education can be called really complete. No new edition of Bulfinch’s classic work can be considered complete without some notice of the American scholar to whose wide erudition and painstaking care it stands as a perpetual monument.
The combined volume entitled Bulfinch’s Mythology quickly became very popular, and by some accounts it is one of the most popular books ever published in the United States.Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. The three original volumes are The Age of Fable (1855), dealing largely with Greek and Roman mythology but also touching on the mythology of other cultures such as the Indian, Egyptian and Norse myths The Age of Chivalry (1858), dealing with Arthurian legend, the Holy Grail and the Mabinogeon and Legends of Charlemagne (1863), dealing with the fantastical legends surrounding Charlemagne and his “paladins” such as Orlando, Oliver and Rogero. Bulfinch also includes many quotations showing how these stories have been handled by poets and playwrights of later years. Bulfinch’s Mythology is a posthumous compilation of three volumes published by Bulfinch during his lifetime which were intended to introduce the general reader to the myths and legends of Western Civilization by presenting them in simple prose with occasional commentary by the author. Thomas Bulfinch was an American banker and Latin scholar.
0 kommentar(er)
