The Legend of Perseus: A Study of Tradition in Story, Custom and Belief

Edwin Sidney Hartland's The Legend of Perseus was published in three volumes between 1894 and 1896. Like its better-known contemporary, James Frazer's The Golden Bough (1890), Hartland's Perseus attained a degree of fame and widespread citation as a convenient compendium of myths and legends. Hartland explored the Greek myth of Perseus, exhaustively tracing its parallels in ancient, medieval, and modern folklore to understand the continuity of story, custom, and belief across time and space. Hartland demonstrated the widespread nature of the supernatural birth of the hero, his encounter with a witch, and his rescue of a fair maid. However, the book proved controversial because Hartland drew parallels between the supernatural birth of Perseus and that of Jesus. This edition brings together all three volumes of Hartland's work in a new, one-volume abridgment that presents all of Hartland's main text and a selection of his footnotes. Read more