Contents of this web site are. . .

Imagine yourself in Boston's financial district almost a hundred and fifty years ago. The buildings on State Street are tiny compared with today's skyscrapers. But eastward, at the end of State Street, is the same expanse of water you would see if you walked there today--Boston Harbor into which sailed decade after decade the merchant ships that had made Boston a great city and State Street a center of trade. It is the end of a working day, and people are bustling out of the banks and investment houses. If you should turn your gaze toward a building marked by a sign "Merchants Bank," you would see coming through the door with the other employees (a dozen or so in all) a dignified-looking man with graying sideburns, dressed in a dark suit with high white collar, bow tie, and a gold watch chain strung across his vest.* If you kept track of him in the crowd, you would see him trudging westward, away from the harbor and State Street. He would be heading toward his bachelor quarters in a boarding-house in Bowdoin Square (a neighborhood now laid to rest beneath Government Center).

Although he would have worked all day in the bank, his other working day was about to begin. In the evening, this bank clerk's custom was to study and write, not just as a pastime, but with a larger aim: to instruct his fellow citizens, old and young, male and female, in the literature of the European past.

Paradox marked the life of Thomas Bulfinch, the man I have described above. 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 l796 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 l8l4, 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 l837 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 l880s) was published when 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 l840s. Until his publishing success in the l850s, his life was inconspicuous.

How did it come about that in late middle age Thomas Bulfinch decided to write books, most of them aimed at making accessible to people who were not members of the elite traditional works of literature? He was following in the footsteps of his architect father Charles Bulfinch who earlier had set an example of using one's personal resources, even to the point of prodigality, to serve the general public. Thomas's immediate motivation sprang from work on a prayer book for King's Chapel in the early l850s. As he studied the Psalms, he devised the plan of making them more accessible to the ordinary reader. For this reason, he wrote his first book, Hebrew Lyrical History, published in l853, in which he arranged the Psalms not in their usual order, but as they corresponded, either in fact or spirit, with events in Jewish history. In his Preface to that work, he says that he hopes this arrangement will "make the Psalms more interesting by linking them in a chain or narrative."

Hebrew Lyrical History was a dress rehearsal for The Age of Fable. In the former work, the Psalms are the main subject matter. This subject matter is controlled by a guiding hypothesis: the reading of Psalms which are related in either fact or spirit to historical events, in the order in which these events occurred, will help readers better to understand both the Psalms and Jewish history. In The Age of Fable, myths, chiefly Greek and Roman, are the main subject matter. This subject matter is also controlled by a guiding hypothesis: the reading of certain myths told in a certain way (so as not to dispel their charm) will help readers better understand both the myths, and British and American poetry which in Bulfinch's time ( as well as earlier) drew heavily from mythology. In the book, he includes l88 passages of myth-related poetry.

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 (Boston, l896) describes the room as resembling "that of a student" with "volumes of Latin, Italian, German, and English classics piled on chair and sofa." A close friend, most likely George Barrell Emerson who was a well-known educator, summed up his motives in the following words:

For many hours of every day, occupied with the details of trade, his real day was given to study, to the highest poetry of the ancients and the moderns, and to the history of the thoughts and deeds of great men and heroes, not as an idle amusement, but that he might gather thence facts and principles for the guidance of the young to the more complete understanding of much of the best of English literature.

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.

*This description of Thomas Bulfinch's dress is based on his portrait which appears on this web site, and which appeared originally in Ellen Susan Bulfinch, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch, Architect, with Other Family Papers (Boston, l896), and which is included as a frontispiece in my book The Bulfinch Solution: Teaching the Ancient Classics in American Schools (Salem, NH: Ayer Company Publishers, Inc., l990), ISBN 0-88l43-ll2-5. Cost is $l9.95; The publisher's address is: No. Stratford, NH 03590. The book can be ordered by mail, through book stores, or on the Internet via their web site, which is www.scry.com/ayer. To order by phone, call 888-267-7323 or fax 603-922-3348.

Thomas Bulfinch's The Age of Fable; or, Stories of Gods and Heroes has had a long and influential life since its original publication in 1855. Before Edith Hamilton's widely used text, the mythology learned by Americans was Bulfinch's mythology. The alternate title, Bulfinch's Mythology, was first used by Edward Everett Hale in his 1881 edition. The National Union Catalog lists well over 100 editions either of the book by itself or, with two of Bulfinch's collections of non-classical legends, as part of a trilogy. Bulfinch did not simply adapt the myths for contemporary readers as did his contemporaries, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Kingsley. They wrote primarily to entertain; he wrote to instruct by making the material entertaining. "Thus we hope to teach mythology," he explains in his preface, "not as a study, but as a relaxation from study; to give our work the charm of a story-book, yet by means of it to impart a knowledge of an important branch of education."

Article for the general educated public.

Cleary, Marie. "Miscuit Utile Dulci: Bulfinch's Mythology as a Pedagogical Prototype," in The Classical World," Volume 78, No. 6, 591-596.

In The Age of Fable, Thomas Bulfinch perfected his technique for spreading knowledge of ancient learning by combining it with a secondary interest of greater contemporary concern. Realizing that most readers were not familiar with classical literature, he set out to combine the useful and the pleasurable, the ancient with the modern. This he accomplished by mixing contemporary citations, allusions and terms into his telling of the classical myths. Bulfinch's pedagogy anticipates John Dewey's concept of "indirect interest," which guides readers to see in seemingly remote subject matter the connections to their immediate interests.

View of Bulfinch's pedagogical technique

Cleary, Marie. "Bulfinch, Thomas," in Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists, Edited by Ward W. Briggs, Jr. Prepared under the auspices of the American Philological Association. Greenwood Press, 1994.

Brief summary with abundant information.

Cleary, Marie. "Classical Mythology in American Life and Literature to 1855: Steps Toward Democratization, unpublished paper.

This paper concentrates on one facet of classical mythology in America--its evolution from a specialized body of knowledge for only Greek and Latin initiates into a field of general interest open to all who could read English. I have chosen the word "democratize" to describe this process rather than "popularize," because the former includes the latter, and adds an ethical dimension; to democratize means not only to make something more popularly available, but to make it work for social equality and against usurpation by power and wealth. I want particularly to investigate the opening-up of mythology's mysteries to people of both sexes who did not go to secondary school and college, and to women in particular--that is, groups which did not until the nineteenth century have access to classical languages. That people of color, including African-American slaves, are included here goes without saying.

Investigation of mythology in American life prior to Bulfinch.

Marie Cleary holds a B.A. in English (Emmanuel College, 1952); an M.A. in Classics, (Boston College, 1971); and an Ed.D in Foundations of Education (University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1982). She was a University Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, 1980-82. Since 1983, she has been a member of the Associates Program for independent scholars, based at Five Colleges, Inc. in Amherst. She has worked for over forty years in the field of education. Her early teaching experience was in and near her native city, Boston, where she was the first woman appointed to the Department of Ancient Languages at Boston Latin School. Since then, she has taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Mount Holyoke College, and Assumption College, in undergraduate courses in Latin language and literature, and graduate-level courses in classics education. Her activities in the field of education, besides teaching, are summarized at the bottom of this page.

Immediately after receiving her B.A., she obtained work with the Department of State at the United States Embassy in Rome. She lived in that city 1952-54 and, later, 1959-60. That experience strengthened her already strong interest in classical antiquity. When she entered the field of education in this country, she began to teach Latin, furthered her study of the classics, and became active in classical organizations and, subsequently, higher education.

Her primary interest throughout her career has been the democratization of the Greek and Roman classics in American education, both currently and historically. Her work on Thomas Bulfinch combines these two aspects. "Democratization" more accurately defines her research topic than "popularization," as the former word includes the latter, and adds an ethical dimension. Cleary has applied her research in democratization of the classics to the following areas:

Curriculum:

Writing, teaching, and publication, of innovative classroom materials for students (Example: A Look at Latin: A Transdisciplinary Unit [Division of Continuing Education, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1977]. In A Look at Latin, Cleary introduces Latinless students to the classics with appealing non-linguistic classical subjects such as archaeology and American classical tradition, as well as some language and literature.)

Teacher education:

• Development and administration of local, regional, and national programs in classics (Example: Co-Director with David Schaefer, "Polis and Res Publica: Classical Political Theory and the U.S. Constitution," national institute for teachers of social studies and Latin, 1988, 1990, 1992, at Holy Cross College, funded three times by the National Endowment for the Humanities);
  
• Articles in classical and foreign language periodicals on the classics in curriculum (Example: "Mendicants and Converts: FLES Latin Educators and Teachers of Non- Classical Subjects," Classical Journal 82.1 [1986], 52-64);
  
• Classroom materials for teachers (Example: Co-editor with Mark Meister, Cargoes from Three Continents: Ancient Mediterranean Trade in Modern Archaeology [Archaeological Institute of America, 1999]. This book is based on a national institute of the same name, 1997, for teachers of social studies and Latin, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America.)

American intellectual history:

Articles on this Web site. Other publications, including, under the name Marie Sally Cleary, The Bulfinch Solution: Teaching the Ancient Classics in American Schools (Ayer, 1990). The book is described as "indispensable" in American National Biography.

Cleary is continuing her research on Thomas Bulfinch’s work as it relates to reforms in American education, particularly female education, in the antebellum era. Her other current research interests include the aesthetic legacy of the Bulfinch family, and the role of Margaret Fuller in classical education.