Rex Warner (1905-1986) was a novelist, translator of Latin and Greek, and scholar of classical literature. A member of the Auden generation, Warner wrote several darkly allegorical novels, most notably The Aerodome, before turning to historical fiction and in 1960 winning the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his Imperial Caesar. Warner was a translator of Xenophon, Thucydides, Plutarch, Caesar, and St. Augustine as well as the poet and Nobel laureate George Seferis, whom he befriended while acting as Director of the British Institute in Athens in the years immediately following World War II. After teaching literature at Bowdoin and the University of Connecticut, Warner returned to England in the 1970s. »

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 has 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. »

Men and Gods

Myths and Legends of the Ancient Greeks

By Rex Warner
Illustrations by Edward Gorey

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 Gods is an essential and delightful book with which to discover some of the key stories of world literature.

Read a chapter (PDF)

Reviews

Shakespeare, Shelley, Tennyson and many others got their knowledge of Greek mythology from the often ironical—and always sophisticated—narratives of Ovid…Detail after detail fixes these myths in the memory…The Golden Age of Greece is dim today, but in Gods and Men the golden apples still shine upon the bough.
— The New York Times

Also see:

The Haunted Looking Glass
Ghost stories chosen and illustrated by Edward Gorey

The Haunted Looking Glass is the late Edward Gorey's selection of his favorite tales of ghosts, ghouls, and grisly goings-on.
The War of the Worlds
By H.G. Wells
Illustrations by Edward Gorey

H. G. Wells’s spellbinding account of an invasion from outer space is the first and still the best of its genre.
Grief Lessons (Paperback)
By Euripides
Translated and with introductory essays by Anne Carson

"Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief." Celebrated contemporary poet and classicist Anne Carson presents new translations of four plays by Euripides.

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Format: Hardcover
Retail Price: $16.95
Price: $12.71 (25% off)


Jan 7, 2008
288 pages
ISBN: 1590172639
9781590172636
Literature in English
NYRB Classics

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