The Greek myths

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Blümel is a member of the Hamburg female artists’ collective Spring, which publishes the annual Spring magazine, an anthology of comics, illustration and free drawing. It's precisely as "scholarly" studies that they disappointed me; and yes, they certainly also fail as "story-telling".

Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). The bloodthirsty biographies of the world’s most infamous pirates are reproduced in this Folio edition of Captain Charles Johnson’s renowned work, including original woodcut illustrations and a fascinating introduction by Margarette Lincoln. Folio 60 (which only goes up to 2006) gives the last printing of the superior original version as 1998 and the 2-volume version as 2006. Because 350 represents the number of days in the Egyptian calendar besides the 5 devoted to the gods (and a year was the length of a king's term in office).My only complaint is that they should have left in Graves' original line references to the primary sources. This edition, one of The Folio Society’s all-time bestsellers, is edited and introduced by Kenneth McLeish, with illustrations by Grahame Baker.

The truth is that Graves approaches the myths rather as an anthropological jigsaw puzzle (a bit like in his The White Goddess).My guess would be that most people are reading the abridged version, which keeps only Robert Graves’s retellings of the myths themselves, and excises his commentary. The question is largely rhetorical, I have other sources of Greek myths, just wondered if anyone else was disappointed by him. Her designs extend to the binding, with motifs depicting the myths, while her double-spread, full-colour map places the ancient tales in their geographical context. In the words of the editor for this edition, "His comments on the stories, printed at the end of each section, are a magpie's nest of anecdotes, other people's half-digested ideas, bucking-bronco rides on every Gravesian hobby-horse from magic mushrooms to goddess-fixation, and the purest fantasy" (p.

The D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths is a classic, beautifully illustrated, appropriate for children and well-written enough to be interesting even for adults. Well, Graves' Greek myths are not like Bulfinch's (or even Michael Grant's) in that they are not primarily concerned with telling the stories, but are historical-anthropological studies along the lines of Frazer's The Golden Bough.Stephen Fry recently retold an immense collection of the classic Greek myths in his book Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold, which would be excellent as a non-academic source with some more contemporary humour and delightful storytelling.

An ideal place to spend a Saturday afternoon, digging through the piles and piles of jumbled books, your mouth going dry with excitement when a treasure suddenly pops up. after all, I've been known to read reports and papers on biochemical pathways in the same circumstances). Ideal for the first time reader, it can be read as a single, continuous narrative, while full commentaries, with cross-references, interpretations, variants and explanations, as well as a comprehensive index of names, make it equally valuable as a work of scholarly reference for anyone seeking an authoritative and detailed account of the gods, heroes and extraordinary events that provide the bedrock of Western literature. Such details have their place - in the footnotes where the interested reader can find them if they wish. Robert Graves has translated and collected the chief Greek myths and extracted their fancy stories and moral lessons in one exciting volume.If you are looking for stories with heroes fighting monsters I would suggest you look elsewhere, however if you are looking a deeper understanding of where the characters you know (and either love or hate) come from and interacted with the world, this is for you. But it is easily remedied – if you ignore the comments, you are left with an incredibly impressive work! Celtic Myths and Legends was compiled in 2006 by acclaimed folklorists Caitlin and John Matthews, with more lovely illustrations by Jane Ray.