From the Preface:

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 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. 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. Yet to the majority of this great circle of readers and students the

name Bulfinch in itself has no significance.

Thomas Bulfinch was a native of Boston, Mass., where he was born in

From the preface:

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 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. 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. Yet to the majority of this great circle of readers and students the

name Bulfinch in itself has no significance.

Thomas Bulfinch was a native of Boston, Mass., where he was born in

1796. His boyhood was spent in that city, and he prepared for college in

the Boston schools. He finished his scholastic training at Harvard College,

and after taking his degree was for a period a teacher in his home city. For

a long time later in life he was employed as an accountant in the Boston

Merchants' Bank. 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. The plan he 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; "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 of Charlemagne" are

included.