No new edition of Bulfinch's classic work can be considered completewithout some notice of the American scholar to whose wide erudition andpainstaking care it stands as a perpetual monument. "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 fiveor six other productions of world-wide renown as a work with whichevery one must claim some acquaintance before his education can becalled really complete. Many readers of the present edition willprobably recall coming in contact with the work as children, and, itmay be added, will no doubt discover from a fresh perusal the source ofnumerous bits of knowledge that have remained stored in their mindssince those early years. Yet to the majority of this great circle ofreaders and students the name Bulfinch in itself has no significance.
Thomas Bulfinch was a native of Boston, Mass., where he was born in1796. His boyhood was spent in that city, and he prepared for collegein the Boston schools. He finished his scholastic training at HarvardCollege, and after taking his degree was for a period a teacher in hishome city. For a long time later in life he was employed as anaccountant in the Boston Merchants' Bank. His leisure time he used forfurther pursuit of the classical studies which he had begun at Harvard,and his chief pleasure in life lay in writing out the results of hisreading, in simple, condensed form for young or busy readers. The planhe followed in this work, to give it the greatest possible usefulness,is set forth in the Author's Preface.
"Age of Fable," First Edition, 1855; "The Age of Chivalry," 1858; "TheBoy Inventor," 1860; "Legends of Charlemagne, or Romance of the MiddleAges," 1863; "Poetry of the Age of Fable," 1863; "Oregon and Eldorado,or Romance of the Rivers," 1860.
In this complete edition of his mythological and legendary lore "TheAge of Fable," "The Age of Chivalry," and "Legends of Charlemagne" areincluded. Scrupulous care has been taken to follow the original text ofBulfinch, but attention should be called to some additional sectionswhich have been inserted to add to the rounded completeness of thework, and which the publishers believe would meet with the sanction ofthe author himself, as in no way intruding upon his original plan butsimply carrying it out in more complete detail. The section on NorthernMythology has been enlarged by a retelling of the epic of the"Nibelungen Lied," together with a summary of Wagner's version of thelegend in his series of music-dramas. Under the head of "Hero Myths ofthe British Race" have been included outlines of the stories ofBeowulf, Cuchulain, Hereward the Wake, and Robin Hood. Of the verseextracts which occur throughout the text, thirty or more have beenadded from literature which has appeared since Bulfinch's time,extracts that he would have been likely to quote had he personallysupervised the new edition.
Finally, the index has been thoroughly overhauled and, indeed, remade.All the proper names in the work have been entered, with references