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.
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 briefly 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 books, which include The Curious Sofa, The Haunted Tea-Cosy, and The Epiplectic Bicycle.
In addition to illustrating his own books, Edward Gorey provided drawings to countless books for both children and adults. Of these, New York Review Books has published The Haunted Looking Glass, a collection of Gothic tales that he selected and illustrated; The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells; Men and Gods, a retelling of ancient Greek myths by Rex Warner; in collaboration with Rhoda Levine, Three Ladies Beside the Sea and He Was There from the Day We Moved In; and The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, a collection of tales by Saki.
“In first place, the stories are beautiful and satisfying in themselves. In the second place, they have deeply affected our own literature.” –Rex Warner
“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
“Rex Warner retells thirty-eight famous myths of ancient Greece that ought to be the intellectual heritage of all the young.” –The New York Times
“The British critic V. S. Pritchett once described Mr. Warner as ‘the only outstanding novelist of ideas whom the decade of ideas produced.’” –The New York Times
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.
Creators
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 briefly 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 books, which include The Curious Sofa, The Haunted Tea-Cosy, and The Epiplectic Bicycle.
In addition to illustrating his own books, Edward Gorey provided drawings to countless books for both children and adults. Of these, New York Review Books has published The Haunted Looking Glass, a collection of Gothic tales that he selected and illustrated; The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells; Men and Gods, a retelling of ancient Greek myths by Rex Warner; in collaboration with Rhoda Levine, Three Ladies Beside the Sea and He Was There from the Day We Moved In; and The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, a collection of tales by Saki.
“In first place, the stories are beautiful and satisfying in themselves. In the second place, they have deeply affected our own literature.” –Rex Warner
“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
“Rex Warner retells thirty-eight famous myths of ancient Greece that ought to be the intellectual heritage of all the young.” –The New York Times
“The British critic V. S. Pritchett once described Mr. Warner as ‘the only outstanding novelist of ideas whom the decade of ideas produced.’” –The New York Times
