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Died: May 27, 1867 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Paradox marked the life of Thomas Bulfinch. His hard-working days and rented room contrasted with the elegance of his family's former days. His seeming tameness and propriety masked the boldness of a pioneering thinker about the role of traditional literature in the rapidly changing society of the United States.
Thomas Bulfinch was born in 1796 to Charles and Hannah (Apthorp) Bulfinch, the sixth of their eleven children and third in line of those who survived infancy. His father was Charles Bulfinch, famous for his designs for buildings in the federalist style - for example, the Massachusetts State House, and portions of the Capitol in Washington. Thomas was born in Newton, Massachusetts in a residence where his parents were living temporarily, but his life and that of his family were rooted in Boston. In the year of his birth, his father, who had been prosperous, lost his own fortune and that of his wife because of his investment in his own bold building scheme for a row of residences in Boston. Charles Bulfinch's complete financial failure in this business venture drastically and permanently changed his life and that of his family.
Thomas Bulfinch, although brought up in a family with limited financial means, had advantages which in the long run served him well. Because his forebears, the Bulfinches and the Apthorps, had been influential both in Boston and elsewhere, he was acquainted with some of society's leaders. In addition, he was educated at some of the finest institutions America boasted at the time: Boston Latin School, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Harvard College.
After graduating from Harvard in 1814, he taught briefly at Boston Latin School and then began a business career, which he would later consider a serious mistake.
He went from one to another branch of business, never achieving financial security until 1837 when he settled into a modest post as a clerk at the Merchants' Bank. He held this position the rest of his life. Eventually he became a part-time writer. The Age of Fable (the book did not acquire its other name Bulfinch's Mythology until the 1880s) was published when he was fifty-nine. Happily, it brought him renown and the first real prosperity he had ever known.
Except for a few years when he lived with his family in Washington, he lived in Boston. He never married. His attachments to his family of birth were always close, particularly to his parents with whom he lived most of the time until they died. He volunteered his services to at least two of the city's most respected institutions - King's Chapel where he was a lifelong parishioner, and the Boston Society of Natural History where he served as Secretary during the 1840s. Until his publishing success in the 1850s, his life was inconspicuous.
Bulfinch would go on to write six more books. In the evening, after dinner with his fellow lodgers at the landlady's table, he would ordinarily go to his room to study and write. His niece Ellen Susan Bulfinch, editor of The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch, Architect, with Other Family Papers describes the room as resembling "that of a student" with "volumes of Latin, Italian, German, and English classics piled on chair and sofa."
These lines written by one who knew him well attest to the fact that public-spiritedness and generosity were the motives that compelled Thomas Bulfinch to make his enduring contribution to American life.
Bulfinch's Mythology
An American writer and teacher who is famous for his
texts on mythology, collectively known as “Bulfinch’s Mythology.”
The Illustrated Age of Fable
Bulfinch's definitive retelling of Greek and Romance
mythology is illustrated for the first time with 100 of the world's most stunning and
dramatic masterpieces of art, including works by Michelangelo, Botticelli, Titian, Rubens,
and Burne-Jones.
Myths of Greece and Rome
The timeless stories of the gods and goddesses of
Greece and Rome come to life beautifully in this lavishly illustrated edition of Thomas
Bulfinch's The Age of Fable, compiled by Bryan Holme. The profound effect these
tales have had on the great artists of the Western world can be seen in paintings and
sculpture by masters from Praxiteles to Bernini, from Rubens to Picasso.