I love D'Aulaires; it was actually the bridge text that allowed me to understand Hamilton's book. I still have their Greek and Norse books in my classroom. I have a print of the illustration of Orpheus and Euridice over one of the doors there.
Wow! I remember enjoying that book when I was assigned to read it in middle school, despite the fact that it mostly went over my head at the time. I see I need to revisit it, and you have inspired me to do that. What a beautiful tribute to a most remarkable lady!
I must have had half a dozen copies of Mythology floating around my parents' houses growing up, it really is remarkable how long it's remained the standard, though I imagine it's been somewhat displaced since I was in high school in the early aughts. I am fond of Bulfinch but it's an acquired taste, and Robert Graves' attempt was strange and contrived., so Edith Hamilton it's always been.
There's really been nothing else like Hamilton's Mythology since it was published. It really does remain the gold-standard introductory text in my view. If it has been displaced, it hasn't been by something better.
Never got around to reading The Greek Way or The Roman Way, which we also had laying around. I was kind of down on Edith Hamilton for a while for not getting a little more into the weeds about the differences between the Greek and Roman deities, or variants on the traditions, but all of that would have been too confusing for the general reader and I still enjoy thumbing through the book now and again.
By the time you're asking those questions, you're ready to move on into deeper scholarly territory. Hamilton is consciously writing for a general audience only vaguely familiar with Classical myth.
Thank you for this. Bullfinch has been on my list for far too long; perhaps Mythology first.
I, too grew up a reader and surrounded by books. My dad was a publisher and used book dealer. I carried more books than I read, and I read a ton. Good books will change your life.
What a tribute to an extraordinary book, and author. And I found your closing paragraph so incredibly moving I almost teared up.
Similar to some other commenters, I remember D'Aulaire as my introduction to myth; I can still see the copy from my elementary school in my minds eye -- an edition with a purple library binding and a map of the night sky and constellations on the front and end-papers. My oldest daughter is a voracious reader, and now has her own copy of D'Aulaire after a similar discovery in her own classical school library (sadly no constellations in the endpapers). Her enthusiasm for it caused me to pick up a copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology at a used bookstore at some point last year; upon completion I decided it was likely too adult for her.
After reading this post, I've changed my mind. She's getting it tonight.
The D'Aulaires I read was in my elementary school library, a yellowish hardback with a kind of worn grid pattern on the covers- hard to describe, but I can still feel it even now. If your daughter can handle D'Aulaires, I would say she's probably ready for Hamilton.
You're probably right -- I forgot that after I read aloud the Lord of the Rings to her a couple of years ago, she immediately read (and loved) the Silmarillion on her own. As a fourth grader. She's in sixth grade now, and our continuing effort as parents is to find reading material sufficiently challenging, but still appropriate for an 11-year old girl.
I really did though! I grew up in an extraordinary time & place... Minnesota in the 1980s. My parents were also dropouts, and I was poor (trailer-house and free-lunch poor, although I realize now how extraordinarily lucky I was by world-historical standards. Whatever.) Anyway, I got a world-class public education for free. It’s amazing when I think about it now.
A friend of mine attended Bryn Mawr. I live just outside of Philadelphia when I met her. Thank you for all this information! I will check out the book 🤗
This is just beautiful. Thank you. I have read several of her works and have been reading the classics and introducing them to my children. Thank you for bringing Edith to light as more than just a name on the spine of a much loved book.
I spent many hours hiding in between the book racks at Waldenbook's as a child reading all i could, with the hopes that i might convince mother to purchase just maybe one of them as it came time to leave the mall. I also fondly remember Hamilton's Mythology book. It was absolutely one of my favorite subjects in my youth.
"That dog-eared and coverless paperback edition of Mythology currently sits wrapped in leather under the base of the lamp on my desk in my classroom, the foundation of my illumination."
I had to stop there when reading, and pause and marvel at this piece of art.
It immediately set an entire scene forth in my mind's eye, akin to the opening scene to story you know nothing about. Will it be an Indiana Jones-like matinée action-drama? Perhaps some kind of Fortean or Lovecraftian horror story? Or maybe a more emotional piece, heavy with the gravitas of real life yet airy and lofty where the spirit may soar on the wings of stories?
(Noy making excuses for my purple prose; I largely learned english from reading Howard, Lovercraft and english classics like Robinson Crusoe and such. Never been able to shake it, despite the best efforts of teachers.)
Reading... it is what saved my mind I think. As a child, I'd go to the library after school to read while waiting for mom to finish work: back then she was a doctor's (MD) secretary and got off about 1½ after school finished. When no shenanigans with friends were available for whatever reason, I invariably went to the library.
I'll never forget when I still a child wanted to read "Firefox". It had a very cool cover and a very cool name, ergo it must bve a good book, right? The librarian took issue with this, deeming it not fit for children. Cue mom reading her the riot act when she came by - "You have no right to decide what he reads or doesn't read! Only I and his father may do so if it's to be done at all, which it isn't!".
(Paternal grandmother, who escaped the Wehrmacht just in time, had strong views on "forbidden" books, censorship, and book burnings, having first-hand experience of such things from working at a publisher's back then: her attitude rubbed off on the entire family.)
I think that's where I got a first inkling of why some teaching-programming methods fail, and some work: the library had european and american and soviet comics in its children's section. The US ones were obviously designed to generate profit by being entertaining, catering to the lowest common denominator to maximise the market (are thoughts I couldn't put to words as child, obviously). The euopean ones were 100% focused on storytelling and art. The soviet ones were blatantly bombastically didactic, about as subtle as a techer telling you to come up to the desk and point to Irkutsk or Guadalajara on a map.
Anyways, this was a treat and a half to read from you. You're making me miss teaching, even!
While I could write a thesis or even professorial dissertation-length piece on the how and whys of the failure of the swedish school system, I'll restrain myself by simply stating that the current workplace environment makes it impossible, and that the regulations stipulating that the teachers must embrace our equivalent of DEI-criteria not only on the job but in private life as well makes it a complete non-starter: having a professional standard and equally professional integrity, yes - the state getting to decide what opinions I hold or express as a private citizen on my own time - never.
State enforced mediocrity is the religious test of our age. The public education systems in the West are all on board with it. But as I’ve noted before, this creates an opening. There is always a remnant who refuses to accept the status quo- parents, students, and teachers- and the opening lies in finding these people and bringing them together. It’s the challenge of our time and necessary for the future of not only the right, but civilization.
Absolutely. The last years before I retired, I would advice worried parents to home-school their children (or form teaching pods) as a supplement and an inoculation against what I can only call indoctrination into a cult of self-hate, hubris and narcissist arrogance.
Homeschooling proper is illegal in Sweden. Keeping your kids from school will only result in police and social services taking them from you, so it needs to be done in addition to regular school.
Of note, just to highlight the rampant and racist hypocrisy underlying all this is the fact that no moslem schools have been closed or had their funding withdrawn despite teaching and preaching racial hatred against jews, despite segregating classes based on sex (which is illegal too), despite barring girls from learning to swim and from PE-classes, and despite several moslem schools having been found out to be recruiting stations for ISIS during the height of the Syrian war.
Woe betide any swedish "free school" (i.e. not run by the local school district) doing anything remotely similar: a teacher was fired, stripped of their license and fined for refusing to call a boy a girl earlier this year - despite there being no legal grounds for this, civil court refused to hear the appeal and threw it out.
Hardly surprising as our courts are manned by politicians "advising" the judge and who can also out-vote the judge on what verict applies, despite having no legal training.
I often say this to americans, that you may dislike what you have and fear what's happening, but trust me: you ain't seen nothing yet.
Damn! There I go again, getting all political and riled up! ;)
What a loving tribute to a true mentor. Although you never met , it's clear that she has had such a deep and indelible influence on you.
I don't know how I could have read your post WITHOUT getting ahold of Mythology.
My young introduction to myths was D'Aulaires' , with Greek and Norse. Much more of a children's book with all those wonderful pictures.
Somewhere Edith Hamilton is smiling.
I love D'Aulaires; it was actually the bridge text that allowed me to understand Hamilton's book. I still have their Greek and Norse books in my classroom. I have a print of the illustration of Orpheus and Euridice over one of the doors there.
Wow! I remember enjoying that book when I was assigned to read it in middle school, despite the fact that it mostly went over my head at the time. I see I need to revisit it, and you have inspired me to do that. What a beautiful tribute to a most remarkable lady!
It's worth a read at any age.
I must have had half a dozen copies of Mythology floating around my parents' houses growing up, it really is remarkable how long it's remained the standard, though I imagine it's been somewhat displaced since I was in high school in the early aughts. I am fond of Bulfinch but it's an acquired taste, and Robert Graves' attempt was strange and contrived., so Edith Hamilton it's always been.
There's really been nothing else like Hamilton's Mythology since it was published. It really does remain the gold-standard introductory text in my view. If it has been displaced, it hasn't been by something better.
Never got around to reading The Greek Way or The Roman Way, which we also had laying around. I was kind of down on Edith Hamilton for a while for not getting a little more into the weeds about the differences between the Greek and Roman deities, or variants on the traditions, but all of that would have been too confusing for the general reader and I still enjoy thumbing through the book now and again.
By the time you're asking those questions, you're ready to move on into deeper scholarly territory. Hamilton is consciously writing for a general audience only vaguely familiar with Classical myth.
Thank you for this. Bullfinch has been on my list for far too long; perhaps Mythology first.
I, too grew up a reader and surrounded by books. My dad was a publisher and used book dealer. I carried more books than I read, and I read a ton. Good books will change your life.
The Greek Way is outstanding. I think it's much more profound and interesting than Mythology.
What a tribute to an extraordinary book, and author. And I found your closing paragraph so incredibly moving I almost teared up.
Similar to some other commenters, I remember D'Aulaire as my introduction to myth; I can still see the copy from my elementary school in my minds eye -- an edition with a purple library binding and a map of the night sky and constellations on the front and end-papers. My oldest daughter is a voracious reader, and now has her own copy of D'Aulaire after a similar discovery in her own classical school library (sadly no constellations in the endpapers). Her enthusiasm for it caused me to pick up a copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology at a used bookstore at some point last year; upon completion I decided it was likely too adult for her.
After reading this post, I've changed my mind. She's getting it tonight.
Thank you for the kind words.
The D'Aulaires I read was in my elementary school library, a yellowish hardback with a kind of worn grid pattern on the covers- hard to describe, but I can still feel it even now. If your daughter can handle D'Aulaires, I would say she's probably ready for Hamilton.
You're probably right -- I forgot that after I read aloud the Lord of the Rings to her a couple of years ago, she immediately read (and loved) the Silmarillion on her own. As a fourth grader. She's in sixth grade now, and our continuing effort as parents is to find reading material sufficiently challenging, but still appropriate for an 11-year old girl.
We were assigned Hamilton’s Mythology in high school and expected to read the whole thing. It is part of the architecture of my brain.
You had good teachers.
I really did though! I grew up in an extraordinary time & place... Minnesota in the 1980s. My parents were also dropouts, and I was poor (trailer-house and free-lunch poor, although I realize now how extraordinarily lucky I was by world-historical standards. Whatever.) Anyway, I got a world-class public education for free. It’s amazing when I think about it now.
Remarkable woman. love to speak with such a person. thank you....i bet she would appreciate this.
I hope that she would.
Thanks!
I just finished Mythology for the first time. Thank you for the suggestion Mr Librarian.
Thank you for the testimonial. I especially appreciated your points about life and work at the end.
A friend of mine attended Bryn Mawr. I live just outside of Philadelphia when I met her. Thank you for all this information! I will check out the book 🤗
Outstanding.
This is just beautiful. Thank you. I have read several of her works and have been reading the classics and introducing them to my children. Thank you for bringing Edith to light as more than just a name on the spine of a much loved book.
Thank you for the kind words. It makes me happy to know that you also are passing her work on to your children.
I spent many hours hiding in between the book racks at Waldenbook's as a child reading all i could, with the hopes that i might convince mother to purchase just maybe one of them as it came time to leave the mall. I also fondly remember Hamilton's Mythology book. It was absolutely one of my favorite subjects in my youth.
We’re really lost something with the decline of the bookstore. I still go to Barnes and Noble whenever I can.
"That dog-eared and coverless paperback edition of Mythology currently sits wrapped in leather under the base of the lamp on my desk in my classroom, the foundation of my illumination."
I had to stop there when reading, and pause and marvel at this piece of art.
It immediately set an entire scene forth in my mind's eye, akin to the opening scene to story you know nothing about. Will it be an Indiana Jones-like matinée action-drama? Perhaps some kind of Fortean or Lovecraftian horror story? Or maybe a more emotional piece, heavy with the gravitas of real life yet airy and lofty where the spirit may soar on the wings of stories?
(Noy making excuses for my purple prose; I largely learned english from reading Howard, Lovercraft and english classics like Robinson Crusoe and such. Never been able to shake it, despite the best efforts of teachers.)
Reading... it is what saved my mind I think. As a child, I'd go to the library after school to read while waiting for mom to finish work: back then she was a doctor's (MD) secretary and got off about 1½ after school finished. When no shenanigans with friends were available for whatever reason, I invariably went to the library.
I'll never forget when I still a child wanted to read "Firefox". It had a very cool cover and a very cool name, ergo it must bve a good book, right? The librarian took issue with this, deeming it not fit for children. Cue mom reading her the riot act when she came by - "You have no right to decide what he reads or doesn't read! Only I and his father may do so if it's to be done at all, which it isn't!".
(Paternal grandmother, who escaped the Wehrmacht just in time, had strong views on "forbidden" books, censorship, and book burnings, having first-hand experience of such things from working at a publisher's back then: her attitude rubbed off on the entire family.)
I think that's where I got a first inkling of why some teaching-programming methods fail, and some work: the library had european and american and soviet comics in its children's section. The US ones were obviously designed to generate profit by being entertaining, catering to the lowest common denominator to maximise the market (are thoughts I couldn't put to words as child, obviously). The euopean ones were 100% focused on storytelling and art. The soviet ones were blatantly bombastically didactic, about as subtle as a techer telling you to come up to the desk and point to Irkutsk or Guadalajara on a map.
Anyways, this was a treat and a half to read from you. You're making me miss teaching, even!
I’m glad you liked the piece and I didn’t know you had been a teacher. If you feel the urge to do it again let me be the first to encourage your
While I could write a thesis or even professorial dissertation-length piece on the how and whys of the failure of the swedish school system, I'll restrain myself by simply stating that the current workplace environment makes it impossible, and that the regulations stipulating that the teachers must embrace our equivalent of DEI-criteria not only on the job but in private life as well makes it a complete non-starter: having a professional standard and equally professional integrity, yes - the state getting to decide what opinions I hold or express as a private citizen on my own time - never.
State enforced mediocrity is the religious test of our age. The public education systems in the West are all on board with it. But as I’ve noted before, this creates an opening. There is always a remnant who refuses to accept the status quo- parents, students, and teachers- and the opening lies in finding these people and bringing them together. It’s the challenge of our time and necessary for the future of not only the right, but civilization.
Absolutely. The last years before I retired, I would advice worried parents to home-school their children (or form teaching pods) as a supplement and an inoculation against what I can only call indoctrination into a cult of self-hate, hubris and narcissist arrogance.
Homeschooling proper is illegal in Sweden. Keeping your kids from school will only result in police and social services taking them from you, so it needs to be done in addition to regular school.
Of note, just to highlight the rampant and racist hypocrisy underlying all this is the fact that no moslem schools have been closed or had their funding withdrawn despite teaching and preaching racial hatred against jews, despite segregating classes based on sex (which is illegal too), despite barring girls from learning to swim and from PE-classes, and despite several moslem schools having been found out to be recruiting stations for ISIS during the height of the Syrian war.
Woe betide any swedish "free school" (i.e. not run by the local school district) doing anything remotely similar: a teacher was fired, stripped of their license and fined for refusing to call a boy a girl earlier this year - despite there being no legal grounds for this, civil court refused to hear the appeal and threw it out.
Hardly surprising as our courts are manned by politicians "advising" the judge and who can also out-vote the judge on what verict applies, despite having no legal training.
I often say this to americans, that you may dislike what you have and fear what's happening, but trust me: you ain't seen nothing yet.
Damn! There I go again, getting all political and riled up! ;)
Say it isn’t so, Sven! ...If you haven’t yet found Christopher Rufo, now would be a good to do so. Be well.
This is great. Will read Mythology
Loved this so much.