Men and Gods MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS

by Warner, Rex; Gorey, Edward

• ISBN13: 9781590172636
• ISBN10: 1590172639
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-08
• Publisher: NYRB Classics

Summary

This outstanding collection brings together the novelist and scholar Rex Warner's knack for spellbinding storytelling with Edward Gorey's inimitable talent as an illustrator in a memorable modern recounting of the most beloved myths of ancient Greece. Writing in a relaxed and winning colloquial style, Warner vividly recreates the classic stories of Jason and the Argonauts and Theseus and the Minotaur, among many others, while Gorey's quirky pen-and-ink sketches offer a visual interpretation of these great myths in the understated but brilliantly suggestive style that has gained him admirers throughout the world. These tales cover the range of Greek mythology, including the creation story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the heroic adventures of Perseus, the fall of Icarus, Cupid and Psyche's tale of love, and the tragic history of Oedipus and Thebes.Men and Godsis an essential and delightful book with which to discover some of the key stories of world literature.

Author Biography

Rex Warner (1905—1986) was an author, translator, and professor of English. Born in Birmingham, England, he was educated at Oxford. Warner was a member of the British Home Guard from 1942 until 1945. He was the Tallman Professor of Classics at Bowdoin College before joining the English faculty at the University of Connecticut in 1962.

Edward Gorey (1925—2000) was born in Chicago. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, spent three years in the army testing poison gas, and attended Harvard College, where he majored in French literature and roomed with the poet Frank O’Hara. In 1953 Gorey published The Unstrung Harp, the first of his many extraordinary illustrated books, which include The Curious Sofa, The Haunted Tea Cosy, and The Epileptic Bicycle. NYRB published Gorey’s illustrated edition of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds and The Haunted Looking Glass, a selection of his favorite tales of ghosts, ghouls, and grisly goings-on.