Author Bulfinch Thomas

t Of Elegant Literature." In his preface Bulfinch outlined his purpose, which was His obituary noted that the contents were "expurgated of all that would be offensive". The versions Bulfinch gives for the classical myths are those in Ovid and Virgil. His Norse myths are abridged from a work by Paul-Henri Mallet, a professor at Geneva, translated by Bishop Thomas Percy as Northern Antiquities[2] (London, 1770, often reprinted). The Bulfinch version of myth, published for genteel Americans just as the first studies of mythography were appearing in Germany, presents the myths in their literary versions, without unnecessary violence, sex, psychology or ethnographic information. "Mr. Bulfinch was a gentleman of a pure Christian character," his obituary observed, "of delicate sensibilities and refined culture." The Bulfinch myths are an indispensable guide to the cultural values of the American 19th century, yet the Bulfinch version is still the version being taught in many American public schools. Marie Sally Cleary, The Bulfinch Solution: Teaching the Ancient Classics in American Schools (1990), sets the book in the context of "democratizing" classical culture for a wider American antebellum readership. Bulfinch was the product of Boston Latin School, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Harvard College, where he graduated in 1814. Though the Bulfinch retellings were largely superseded in American high schools by Edith Hamilton's works on mythology, a "sumptuously illustrated" edition was offered in the Christmas 1979 catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum of Art[3]