A few days ago I was procrastinating marketing myself on social media– oh all right, I was on twitter when someone tweeted that Bullfinch’s Mythology was free on Amazon.
Well, hot diggity! FREE!
So I clicked on through and took a look and yes, Bullfinch’s Mythology was indeed free. It was a public domain copy put out by the Gutenberg Project. There was a comment by one Richard Martin to the effect that he’d gotten several inquiries about the book from concerned people, and that yes, the book was indeed Bullfinch’s Mythology in its entirety, but it was not the 1991 Harper-Collin’s version that he had edited and commented on.
In 1991, Martin was an associate professor of Classics at Princeton. It was a really gracious comment, and it made me click around until I found the 1991 edition and could read about that, and then, DESPITE the existence of a completely free version of the myths, I bought the 1991 version. Its was only available used and it wasn’t all that cheap, but a well documented resource is gold.
The book, a library edition in excellent condition, arrived today and right there on the front it says:
- The Age of Fable
- The Age of Chivalry
- Legends of Charlemagne
I was immediately cast back to my childhood, when I loved mythology, and gods and creatures lived in my head, and in those stories, there were often large glimpses of women who did things. Goddesses were as fearsome as gods.
This book has a list of proverbial expressions, illustrations, dictionary and index, a bibliography, and maps and charts. You’d think that alone is reason to celebrate the acquisition, but you know what? That’s not it.
It was this:
I opened to the table of contents and very first heading is this:
Stories of Gods and Heroes
Don’t you, right now this minute, want to pick up a book (paper or not) and have an adventure?
I do.
