Recommended Books — Interactive Greek Gods Family Tree
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Interactive Greek Gods Family Tree · Reading list

Recommended Books

A working bibliography on Greek mythology — the Olympians and their quarrels, the heroes and their journeys, the poets who first sang of them, and the modern novelists who keep retelling the stories. Mixes general-reader introductions, illustrated editions for younger readers, the major scholarly references, and the literary reimaginings now driving a Greek-myth revival. Affiliate links to Amazon support WebExhibits. (See also the recommended web sites.)

Modern Retellings & Novels

  • Mythos

    Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold

    Stephen Fry · 2017

    The first volume of Fry’s bestselling trilogy. He tells the creation of the cosmos and the Olympians’ rise with novelistic flair and dry comic asides — the most painless modern entry into the canon.

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  • Heroes

    Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined

    Stephen Fry · 2018

    Volume two of the trilogy: Perseus, Heracles, Theseus, Atalanta, Jason, Bellerophon, Oedipus — the mortal heroes’ labors and tragedies, told in the same warmly conversational voice.

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  • Troy

    Troy: The Greek Myths Reimagined

    Stephen Fry · 2020

    Closes the trilogy with the Trojan War, from the apple of Eris to the sack of the city. A companion to Homer that fills in everything Homer assumed his audience already knew.

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  • Circe

    Circe

    Madeline Miller · 2018

    The witch of Aiaia — daughter of Helios, exile, transformer of men — gets her own life story. A literary reimagining that sent millions of readers back to the Odyssey.

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  • The Song of Achilles

    The Song of Achilles

    Madeline Miller · 2012

    Patroclus narrates the love story at the heart of the Iliad. Winner of the Orange Prize and the book that, more than any other, opened the current wave of mythological fiction.

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  • The Silence of the Girls

    The Silence of the Girls

    Pat Barker · 2018

    The Trojan War from the perspective of Briseis, the captured queen Achilles takes as his prize. An unsentimental answer to Homer from the Booker-winning author of Regeneration.

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  • A Thousand Ships

    A Thousand Ships

    Natalie Haynes · 2021

    A chorus of women — Trojan, Greek, mortal, divine — narrates the war and its aftermath. Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

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General Reference & Anthologies

  • Mythology

    Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

    Edith Hamilton · 1942 (75th anniv. ed.)

    The standard one-volume introduction for more than three generations of American readers. Still the recommended starting point — clear, dignified, comprehensive.

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  • Bulfinch's Mythology

    Bulfinch’s Mythology

    Thomas Bulfinch, ed. Richard P. Martin · 1855 (HarperCollins ed. 1991)

    The 19th-century classic that introduced the English-speaking world to its mythological vocabulary. Covers Greek, Roman, Norse and Arthurian material in three parts.

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  • The Greek Myths

    The Greek Myths: Complete Edition

    Robert Graves · 1955 (Penguin combined ed. 1992)

    Graves’s eccentric, magisterial two-in-one retelling, with running commentary tying every variant of every myth to ritual, history, and geography. Idiosyncratic but inexhaustible.

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  • Greece and Rome: Myths and Legends

    Greece and Rome: Myths and Legends

    H. A. Guerber · 1907 (Senate ed. 1986)

    A heavily illustrated late-Victorian compendium that stays close to the ancient sources. Useful for the older art and the detailed cross-references.

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  • The Complete Idiot's Guide to Classical Mythology

    The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Classical Mythology

    Kevin Osborn & Dana L. Burgess · 1998

    A surprisingly thorough survey of Greek and Roman myth, organised for browsing. Good as a quick-look companion volume.

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  • Greek Mythology: An Encyclopedia of Myth and Legend

    Greek Mythology: An Encyclopedia of Myth and Legend

    Richard Stoneman · 1991

    A short A–Z dictionary of gods, heroes, places and mythical creatures. Deliberately excludes the Roman material.

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For Younger Readers

  • D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths

    D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths

    Ingri & Edgar Parin d’Aulaire · 1962

    The illustrated picture-book canon — in print for sixty years. The book most adults today first met the Olympians in; still the best gift for a curious nine-year-old.

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  • The Greek Gods

    The Greek Gods

    Bernard Evslin, Dorothy Evslin & Ned Hoopes · 1966

    A tightly written middle-school introduction to the Olympians. The Evslins have a gift for the dramatic, single-page vignette.

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  • Greek Gods and Heroes

    Greek Gods and Heroes

    Robert Graves · 1960

    Graves’s short, crisp retellings written for younger readers — the same scholarship as the adult Greek Myths, distilled to two-page chapters.

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Homer, Hesiod & the Hymns

  • The Iliad

    The Iliad

    Homer, trans. Emily Wilson · 2023

    The first Iliad in English by a woman: a blank-verse translation that’s fast, line-for-line, and modern without slang. The new default reading edition.

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  • The Odyssey

    The Odyssey

    Homer, trans. Emily Wilson · 2017

    Wilson’s landmark translation: 12,109 lines of iambic pentameter, exactly matching Homer’s line count. Praised by reviewers as a cultural event in its own right.

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  • The Iliad

    The Iliad

    Homer, trans. W. H. D. Rouse · 1938 (Signet ed.)

    Rouse’s lively prose translation, made for the reader rather than the classroom. The classic Mentor/Signet paperback edition.

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  • The Odyssey

    The Odyssey

    Homer, trans. W. H. D. Rouse · 1937 (Signet ed.)

    Companion volume to the Rouse Iliad: plain English prose, told as story, the way the rhapsodes meant it to be heard.

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  • The Homeric Hymns

    The Homeric Hymns

    Trans. Apostolos N. Athanassakis · 1976

    The thirty-three short hexameter hymns to individual gods — the source for many of the foundational stories of Demeter, Apollo, Hermes and Aphrodite. A line-for-line translation with notes.

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  • Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia

    Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia

    Hesiod, trans. Glenn W. Most · Loeb Classical Library, 2006

    The bilingual scholarly edition of Hesiod, with the genealogy of the gods on facing pages. The starting point for any serious work on early Greek religion.

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Goddesses, Women & the Feminine

  • Pandora's Jar

    Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

    Natalie Haynes · 2022

    Ten essays on the women the tradition has flattened — Pandora, Jocasta, Helen, Medusa, Penelope, Medea, the Amazons, Clytemnestra, Eurydice, Phaedra. Sharp, funny, classically informed.

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  • Women of Classical Mythology

    Women of Classical Mythology: A Biographical Dictionary

    Robert E. Bell · 1991

    2,600 entries on every woman, mortal or divine, in Greek and Roman myth. Includes a reverse index of “the men in their lives.”

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  • The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine

    The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine

    Christine Downing · 1981

    A Jungian/feminist reading of the Greek goddesses as stages in a woman’s life. A foundational text in the recovery of goddess scholarship.

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  • The Goddess: Power, Sexuality, and the Feminine Divine

    The Goddess: Power, Sexuality, and the Feminine Divine

    Shahrukh Husain · 1997

    A cross-cultural illustrated panorama of goddess worship from Paleolithic Venuses to contemporary Hindu deities, with the Greek figures placed in a much wider context.

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Scholarship: Religion, Sources & Influence

  • Greek Religion

    Greek Religion

    Walter Burkert · 1985 (Harvard)

    The standard scholarly account of Greek religious practice from Mycenae to the Hellenistic age. Heavy going but indispensable; cited everywhere.

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  • Travelling Heroes

    Travelling Heroes: In the Epic Age of Homer

    Robin Lane Fox · 2008

    An Oxford classicist argues that the real eighth-century BC voyages of Greek traders around the eastern Mediterranean shaped the monsters and gods of Hesiod and the Hymns.

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  • Greek Myths and Mesopotamia

    Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and Influence in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod

    Charles Penglase · 1994 (Routledge)

    A close comparison of the Homeric Hymns and the Theogony with Mesopotamian myths of Inanna, Dumuzi and Ninurta. Persuasive on the deep eastern roots of Greek divine genealogy.

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  • The Daily Life of the Greek Gods

    The Daily Life of the Greek Gods

    Giulia Sissa & Marcel Detienne · 2000 (Stanford)

    What were the gods’ bodies made of? How did they eat, organise themselves, move between Olympus and earth? A short, original book of structuralist anthropology.

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  • Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe

    Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe

    Donald A. Mackenzie · 1917 (Senate ed. 1995)

    Early-20th-century survey of the Minoan and pre-Hellenic mythological substrate. Dated in interpretation but useful for the sources it gathers.

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Dictionaries & Reference

  • The Oxford Classical Dictionary

    The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd Edition

    N. G. L. Hammond & H. H. Scullard, eds. · 1970

    The classic single-volume reference to ancient Greek and Roman civilisation. Newer editions exist; the second is the one cited throughout this exhibit.

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  • Who's Who in Greek and Roman Mythology

    Who’s Who in Greek and Roman Mythology

    David Kravitz · 1975 (Clarkson Potter)

    A compact biographical dictionary of mythological figures, with full family relationships and place-and-creature entries.

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  • Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend

    Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend

    Maria Leach, ed. · 1949

    Over 4,000 entries on the gods, heroes, ogres, witches and folk songs of the world’s mythologies. The Greek material is placed in a deliberately wide comparative frame.

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