Other editions of book A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales

The stories in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys are all stories within a story, the frame story being that a Williams College student, Eustace Bright, is telling these tales to a group of children at Tanglewood, an area in Lenox, Massachusetts, where Hawthorne lived for a time. All the tales are modified from the original myths.A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys covers the myths ofThe Gorgon's Head - recounts the story of Perseus killing Medusa at the request of the king of the island, Polydectes.The Golden Touch - recounts the story of King Midas and his "Golden Touch".The Paradise of Children - recounts the story of Pandora opening the box filled with all of mankind's Troubles.The Three Golden Apples - recounts the story of Heracles procuring the Three Golden Apples from the Hesperides' orchard, with the help of Atlas.The Miraculous Pitcher - recounts the story of Baucis and Philemon providing food and shelter to two strangers who were Zeus and "Quicksilver" (Hermes) in disguise. Baucis and Philemon were rewarded by the gods for their kindness; they were promised never to live apart from one another.The Chimæra - recounts the story of Bellerophon taming Pegasus and killing the Chimæra.The book includes the myths of: Theseus and the Minotaur (Chapter: "The Minotaur")Antaeus and the Pygmies (Chapter: "The Pygmies")Dragon's Teeth (Chapter: "The Dragon's Teeth")Circe's Palace (Chapter: "Circe's Palace")Proserpina, Ceres, Pluto, and the Pomegranate Seed (Chapter: "The Pomegranate Seed")Jason and the Golden Fleece (Chapter: "The Golden Fleece")Hawthorne wrote an introduction, titled "The Wayside", referring to The Wayside in Concord, where he lived from 1852 until his death. In the introduction, Hawthorne writes about a visit from his young friend Eustace Bright, who requested a sequel to A Wonder-Book, which impelled him to write the Tales. Although Hawthorne informs us in the introduction that these stories were also later retold by Cousin Eustace, the frame stories of A Wonder-Book have been abandoned.Hawthorne wrote the first book while renting a small cottage in the Berkshires, a vacation area for industrialists during the Gilded Age. The owner of the cottage, a railroad baron, renamed the cottage "Tanglewood" in honor of the book written there. Later, a nearby mansion was renamed Tanglewood, where outdoor classical concerts were held, which became a Berkshire summer tradition. Ironically, Hawthorne hated living in the Berkshires.The Tanglewood neighborhood of Houston was named after the book. The book was a favorite of Mary Catherine Farrington, the daughter of Tanglewood developer William Farrington. It reportedly inspired the name of the thickly wooded Tanglewood Island in the state of Washington.

Hawthorne's introduction to "Tanglewood Tales": The author has long been of opinion that many of the classical myths were capable of being rendered into very capital reading for children. In the little volume here offered to the public, he has worked up half a dozen of them, with this end in view. A great freedom of treatment was necessary to his plan; but it will be observed by every one who attempts to render these legends malleable in his intellectual furnace, that they are marvellously independent of all temporary modes and circumstances. They remain essentially the same, after changes that would affect the identity of almost anything else. He does not, therefore, plead guilty to a sacrilege, in having sometimes shaped anew, as his fancy dictated, the forms that have been hallowed by an antiquity of two or three thousand years. No epoch of time can claim a copyright in these immortal fables. They seem never to have been made; and certainly, so long as man exists, they can never perish; but, by their indestructibility itself, they are legitimate subjects for every age to clothe with its own garniture of manners and sentiment, and to imbue with its own morality. In the present version they may have lost much of their classical aspect (or, at all events, the author has not been careful to preserve it), and have, perhaps, assumed a Gothic or romantic guise. In performing this pleasant task,--for it has been really a task fit for hot weather, and one of the most agreeable, of a literary kind, which he ever undertook,--the author has not always thought it necessary to write downward, in order to meet the comprehension of children. He has generally suffered the theme to soar, whenever such was its tendency, and when he himself was buoyant enough to follow without an effort. Children possess an unestimated sensibility to whatever is deep or high, in imagination or feeling, so long as it is simple, likewise. It is only the artificial and the complex that bewilder them.

Hawthorne wrote these stories for children based on Greek myth and legend. They are incomparable retellings of themes which the Greek dramatists used in creating their immortal plays and literature. Contents: The Gorgon's Head; The Golden Touch; The Paradise of Children; The Three Golden Apples; The Miraculous Pitcher; The Chimaera; The Wayside; The Minotaur; The Pygmies; The Dragon's Teeth; Circe's Palace; The Pomegranate Seeds; and The Golden Fleece.

Hawthorne wrote these stories for children based on Greek myth and legend. They are incomparable retellings of themes which the Greek dramatists used in creating their immortal plays and literature. Contents: The Gorgon's Head; The Golden Touch; The Paradise of Children; The Three Golden Apples; The Miraculous Pitcher; The Chimaera; The Wayside; The Minotaur; The Pygmies; The Dragon's Teeth; Circe's Palace; The Pomegranate Seeds; and The Golden Fleece.