Classical mythology popularization

Thomas Bulfinch

1796 – 1867

Thomas Bulfinch was an American author and banker who spent much of his career as a clerk at the Merchants' Bank of Boston, devoting his spare time to writing accessible retellings of classical and medieval mythology. His trilogy — The Age of Fable (1855), The Age of Chivalry (1858), and Legends of Charlemagne (1863) — collectively known as Bulfinch's Mythology, introduced Greek, Roman, Norse, and Arthurian myth to generations of English-speaking readers. Although not an esotericist himself, his work served as a primary gateway through which Victorian and later audiences encountered mythological traditions that form the symbolic vocabulary of Western occultism.