Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
[Editor's Note: The etext contains all three sections.]
No new edition of Bulfinch's classic work can be consideredcomplete without some notice of the American scholar to whose wideerudition and painstaking 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 five or six other productions of world-widerenown as a work with which every one must claim some acquaintancebefore his education can be called really complete. Many readersof the present edition will probably recall coming in contact withthe work as children, and, it may be added, will no doubt discoverfrom a fresh perusal the source of numerous bits of knowledge thathave remained stored in their minds since those early years. Yetto the majority of this great circle of readers and students thename Bulfinch in itself has no significance.
Thomas Bulfinch was a native of Boston, Mass., where he was bornin 1796. His boyhood was spent in that city, and he prepared forcollege in the Boston schools. He finished his scholastic trainingat Harvard College, and after taking his degree was for a period ateacher in his home city. For a long time later in life he wasemployed as an accountant in the Boston Merchants' Bank. Hisleisure time he used for further pursuit of the classical studieswhich he had begun at Harvard, and his chief pleasure in life layin writing out the results of his reading, in simple, condensedform for young or busy readers. The plan he followed in this work,to give it the greatest possible usefulness, is set forth in theAuthor's Preface.
"Age of Fable," First Edition, 1855; "The Age of Chivalry," 1858;
"The Boy Inventor," 1860; "Legends of Charlemagne, or Romance of
the Middle Ages," 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"The Age of Fable," "The Age of Chivalry," and "Legends ofCharlemagne" are included. Scrupulous care has been taken tofollow the original text of Bulfinch, but attention should becalled to some additional sections which have been inserted to addto the rounded completeness of the work, and which the publishersbelieve would meet with the sanction of the author himself, as inno way intruding upon his original plan but simply carrying it outin more complete detail. The section on Northern Mythology hasbeen enlarged by a retelling of the epic of the "Nibelungen Lied,"together with a summary of Wagner's version of the legend in hisseries of music-dramas. Under the head of "Hero Myths of theBritish Race" have been included outlines of the stories ofBeowulf, Cuchulain, Hereward the Wake, and Robin Hood. Of theverse extracts which occur throughout the text, thirty or morehave been added from literature which has appeared sinceBulfinch's time, extracts that he would have been likely to quotehad he personally supervised the new edition.
Finally, the index has been thoroughly overhauled and, indeed,remade. All the proper names in the work have been entered, withreferences to the pages where they occur, and a conciseexplanation or definition of each has been given.