Mythology
- New York: Longmans, Green and Co, 1924
New York: Longmans, Green and Co, 1924. Near Fine/Very Good +. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1924. First American Edition. Octavo (18.5cm); publisher's cloth in gray pictorial dust jacket printed in blue; xx,155pp.; illus. Very light wear to dust jacket, spine panel toned, tiny chip mid-rear panel, else a Near Fine copy in Very Good jacket. Forms part of the series Our Debt to Greece and Rome, edited by George Depue Hadzsits and David Moore Robinson.
One of the author's final published works, Mythology addresses the question "What Is Our Debt to Greek Mythology?" Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928), who spent her career as a fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, has been described as the first English female academic, as well as a founder of the modern study of Greek and Roman religion and mythology. She was also both "bloody Jane" (by her Cambridge colleagues) and "my hero" (by Mary Beard, another fellow at Newnham College who was born thirty years after Harrison's death, but who probably would have also called her "bloody Jane" if they had overlapped).
Harrison was a popular, though sometimes overly "histrionic" lecturer, and the present collection of essays on mythology employ Harrison's to-the-point chattiness, opening with "We shall begin with a lesser Olympian, with Hermes. Let us see him first with Homer's eyes."
By the time Mythology was published, Harrison had officially retired from academic life, having taken up quarters in Paris where she also wrote her tantalizingly brief memoir Reminiscences of a Student's Life, which was published by the Hogarth Press a year later, in 1925.
References:
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Mary Beard, "My Hero: Jane Ellen Harrison," in The Guardian, Sept. 4, 2010.
One of the author's final published works, Mythology addresses the question "What Is Our Debt to Greek Mythology?" Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928), who spent her career as a fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, has been described as the first English female academic, as well as a founder of the modern study of Greek and Roman religion and mythology. She was also both "bloody Jane" (by her Cambridge colleagues) and "my hero" (by Mary Beard, another fellow at Newnham College who was born thirty years after Harrison's death, but who probably would have also called her "bloody Jane" if they had overlapped).
Harrison was a popular, though sometimes overly "histrionic" lecturer, and the present collection of essays on mythology employ Harrison's to-the-point chattiness, opening with "We shall begin with a lesser Olympian, with Hermes. Let us see him first with Homer's eyes."
By the time Mythology was published, Harrison had officially retired from academic life, having taken up quarters in Paris where she also wrote her tantalizingly brief memoir Reminiscences of a Student's Life, which was published by the Hogarth Press a year later, in 1925.
References:
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Mary Beard, "My Hero: Jane Ellen Harrison," in The Guardian, Sept. 4, 2010.