This is a collection of fifty Greek myths for children written by a number of different authors and including ten retellings from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales. Seventeen stories deal with the Trojan War and its aftermath. Most retellings stay fairly close to ancient literary versions, although a few are more innovative. Black and white illustrations depict key scenes.

Featured Stories:

• Pluto and Proserpine (by H.P. Maskell),
• Pan and Syrinx (by Mrs Guy E. Lloyd),
• The Story of Phaeton (by M.M. Bird),
• Arethusa (by V.C. Turnbull),
• The Story of Daphne (by M.M. Bird),
• Deucalion and Pyrrha (by M.M. Bird),
• Epimetheus and Pandora (Nathaniel Hawthorne),
• Europa and the God-Bull (Nathaniel Hawthorne),
• Cadmus and the Dragon’s Teeth (Nathaniel Hawthorne),
• Orpheus and Eurydice (by V.C. Turnbull),
• Hercules and the Golden Apples (parts I&II Nathaniel Hawthorne),
• Hercules and Nessus (by H.P. Maskell),
• The Quest of the Golden Fleece (by M.M. Bird),
• How Theseus Found his Father (Nathaniel Hawthorne),
• Theseus and the Witch Medea (Nathaniel Hawthorne),
• Theseus Goes to Slay the Minotaur (Nathaniel Hawthorne),
• Theseus and Ariadne (Nathaniel Hawthorne),
• Paris and Oenone (by V.C. Turnbull),
• Iphigenia (by Mrs Guy E. Lloyd),
• Protesilaus (by Mrs Guy E. Lloyd),
• The Death of Hector (by V.C. Turnbull),
• The Wooden Horse (by Francis Storr),
• The Sack of Troy (by Francis Storr),
• The Death of Ajax (Greater not Lesser Ajax, by Francis Storr),
• The Flight of Aeneas from Troy (by Francis Storr),
• Aeneas and Dido (by V.C. Turnbull),
• Aeneas in Hades (by V.C. Turnbull),
• Nisus and Euryalus (by Francis Storr),
• Ulysses in Hades (by M.M. Bird),
• Circe’s Palace (Nathaniel Hawthorne),
• Ulysses and the Cyclops (by Hope Moncrieff),
• The Sirens (by V.C. Turnbull),
• The Story of Nausicaa (by M.M. Bird),
• The Homecoming of Ulysses (by M.M. Bird),
• Baucis and Philemon (by H.P. Maskell),
• Hypermnestra (by V.C. Turnbull),
• Oedipus at Colonos (by Mrs Guy E. Lloyd),
• Midas (by H.P. Maskell),
• Perseus and Andromeda (by V.C. Turnbull),
• Meleager and Atalanta (by H.P. Maskell),
• The Story of Daedalus and Icarus (by M.M. Bird),
• Scylla, the Daughter of Nisus (by Mrs Guy E. Lloyd),
• The Story of Pyramus and Thisbe (by M.M. Bird),
• Hero and Leander (by Mrs Guy E. Lloyd),
• Pygmalion and the Image (by Francis Storr),
• Cephalus and Procris (by H.P. Maskell),
• Echo and Narcissus (Thomas Bulfinch),
• The Ring of Polycrates (by M.M. Bird),
• Romulus and Remus (by Mrs Guy E. Lloyd).

This is a compilation anthology of stories by many nineteenth-century authors, including ten stories from the two Victorian anthologies of Nathaniel Hawthorne and one from Thomas Bulfinch. The original retellings that comprise the remaining thirty-nine stories maintain a broadly consistent writing style, particularly as regards the use of old-fashioned English that makes this anthology distinct from its 1910s children’s anthology rivals (e.g. Farrar 1910 Old Greek Nature Stories, Baker 1913 Stories of Old Greece and Rome) and conversely more old-fashioned in language than the Hawthorne retellings of more than sixty years earlier.

Storr notes in his preface that the contributing authors have had fairly free rein to write as they like, and accordingly not all these stories read as though they take place in a continuous universe. This is particularly the case with Hawthorne’s retellings, which are quite tonally different from the rest. For example, Medea is unproblematically presented as a good person for the entire of M. M. Bird’s Argonauts retelling. Later in the anthology, she suddenly reappears as an unabashedly evil advisor of Aegeus who attempts to murder Theseus in one of Hawthorne’s retellings. The anthology omits all explanation as to how Medea moved from one story to the next, and the different retellings emphasise such different extremes of her character that a reader with no outside knowledge might conclude these are not intended to be the same character.

Hawthorne’s retellings are known for being innovative, but in general, the new retellings written for this anthology are closely adapted from ancient source material, sometimes reading like a simplified child friendly English translation. There are, however, a few exceptions. In Mrs Guy E. Lloyd’s Syrinx retelling, for example, Syrinx is a human girl who sits and talks with Pan until he frightens her and she runs away, falls into the water and disappears, by implication drowning.

Although the anthology is named after Ulysses, he is not the dominant protagonist this might suggest. He is the main character of six retellings, only slightly more than the also prominent Aeneas, and he appears in some additional Trojan War stories. Nor is he presented as a particularly likeable character in his initial appearances. 

Thematically, this anthology begins with myths about sexual violence, then moves to stories about the origin of humanity and other origin stories, hero stories, the Trojan War, Aeneid, Odyssey and finally miscellaneous stories from Ovid with a broad love story theme. This is a curiously atypical structure for children’s anthologies of myth, which tend to either be roughly chronological or start with stories of gods and move to a focus on humans.

This book begins with a preface by Storr, in which he appears self-conscious about ‘adding yet another book of Classical Stories to the endless existing versions’ but justifies doing so because every version brings out something different in the stories. He also says that the authors have avoided overt moralising, since ‘Most of the stories point their own moral’ and ‘Young readers to-day resent the sermons even of a Kingsley.’ [referring to Kingsley’s 1856 myth anthology The Heroes]. He calls Hawthorne’s texts ‘the joy of our childhood’; ‘our’ in this case presumably means that Storr as a child was a fan of Hawthorne.

The story of Proserpine uses quite explicit language; she is ‘the ravished maiden’, Pluto is her ‘bold ravisher’ and Jupiter refers to ‘This rape of the god lover’. The Arethusa and Daphne retellings, meanwhile, seem largely on the side of the sexually violent god. Daphne is described as an unnatural girl who loves only hunting and shuns love wrongly. Apollo is implied to be unusually compassionate for forgiving her eventually for her rejection and transformation into a laurel after he has calmed down. Alpheus is described as s passionate young lover with admirably deep feelings for Arethusa. Arethusa herself eventually realises she should not flee Alpheus, and the two merge their waters happily; again, the language and imagery is unusually sexual.

The Paris retelling has altered the behaviour of Paris’ female (but not male) family members to be significantly more compassionate. Hecuba now disobeys Priam’s command to have the infant Paris killed, and secretly arranges him to be spared. Cassandra finds Paris when he is fleeing from the other Trojan princes, recognises him as her brother and affectionately introduces him to everyone else; this is now how Paris discovers the secret of his birth. Oenone, rather than refusing to heal Paris after he has abandoned her, is still going to heal him but he dies in the moment he is brought to her.

Aeneas and Venus’ relationship has also been altered to confirm better to an unambiguously positive concept of female family members. In this version, after Aeneas realises it was Venus to whom he was speaking in disguise upon his arrival in Carthage, he is genuinely cheered. He does not express the frustration at his mother’s reluctance to reveal herself truly to him that he does in Virgil.

The Protesilaus retelling somewhat Christianises the story, and adds a twist in which Laodamia is punished for failing to believe in duty and military self-sacrifice as her husband does. After the gods briefly return the shade of Protesilaus to her, Laodamia is insistent they will bring him back to life now too, since they have already shown such generosity. She does not value her husband’s heroic military sacrifice as he does, and after his ghost leaves she falls down dead from grief. The story ends with her punishment, but also with the promise of an eventual happy ending: ‘The gods are just, and Laodamia had not yet learnt the lesson of Protesilaus, that there is a higher and nobler thing even than human love – self-sacrifice and duty. Therefore she is doomed for a set time to wander in the Mourning Fields apart from happy ghosts, till her spirit raised and solemnized by suffering is worthy to meet her lord who walks with the heroes of old in the dwellings of the blest.’

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls, ill. Walter Crane, Boston, MA: EriK Publications, 2015 (reprint, ed.pr. 1851). 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Tanglewood Tales, Chapel Hill, NC, 2009 (reprint of 1909 ed., ed. pr. 1853).