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=                  A_Wonder-Book_for_Girls_and_Boys                  =
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                            Introduction
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'A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys' is an 1851 children's book by
American author Nathaniel Hawthorne in which he retells several Greek
myths. It was followed by a sequel, 'Tanglewood Tales'.


                              Overview
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The stories in 'A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys' are all stories
within a story. The frame story is that Eustace Bright, a Williams
College student, 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 versions of ancient Greek myths:

* "The Gorgon's Head" - recounts the story of Perseus killing Medusa
at the request of the king of the island of Seriphos, Polydectes.
* "The Golden Touch" - recounts the story of King Midas and his
"Golden Touch".
* "The Paradise of Children" - recounts the story of Pandora opening
Pandora's box, which was 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.


                Composition and publication history
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Hawthorne expressed his idea to rewrite Greek myths as early as 1846
when he outlined a book to Evert Augustus Duyckinck of stories "taken
out of the cold moonshine of classical mythology, and modernized, or
perhaps gothicized, so that they may be felt by children of these
days." In 1851, just after the birth of his daughter Rose, he proposed
the idea again in the form of a collection of six tales. His aim would
be, he wrote, "substituting a tone in some degree Gothic or romantic,
or any such tone as may please myself, instead of the classic
coldness, which is as repellent as the touch of marble... and, of
course, I shall purge out all the old heathen wickedness, and put in a
moral wherever practicable."

Publisher James T. Fields pushed for Hawthorne to complete the project
quickly. Fields had begun reissuing the author's earlier series for
children titled 'Grandfather's Child', originally published by
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and now renamed 'True Stories from History
and Biography', and was also planning a new edition of 'Twice-Told
Tales'. The entirety of the collection was written between June and
mid-July 1851. He sent the final manuscript to Fields on July 15 and
wrote: "I am going to begin to enjoy the summer now and to read
foolish novels, if I can get any, and smoke cigars and think of
nothing at all -- which is equivalent to thinking of all manner of
things."

The Hawthornes had moved to The Berkshires shortly after the
publication of 'The Scarlet Letter' and it was here that he completed
not only 'A Wonder-Book' but also his novel 'The House of the Seven
Gables'. He was able to spend time with several other literary
figures, including Herman Melville, who was then living at Arrowhead
in Pittsfield. Melville is referenced by name in 'A Wonder-Book': "On
the higher side of Pittsfield, sits Herman Melville, shaping out the
gigantic conception of his 'White Whale' while the gigantic shape of
Graylock looms upon him from his study-window." Biographer Philip
McFarland called this period "by far the most productive creative
period of Hawthorne's life", though it also marked the end of his time
as a writer of short tales. The Hawthornes would soon move temporarily
to West Newton, Massachusetts, where the author would begin to write
'The Blithedale Romance', a novel he conceived while in Lenox.

A later edition from 1922 was illustrated by Arthur Rackham.


                              Response
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Hawthorne wrote 'A Wonder-Book' immediately after 'The House of the
Seven Gables'. That novel had sold 6,710 copies by August 1851, and 'A
Wonder-Book' sold 4,667 copies in just two months after its November
1851 publication. By comparison, his friend Herman Melville's novel
'Moby-Dick' was released the same month, with the British edition
selling under 300 copies in two years, and the American edition under
1,800 in the first year. Hawthorne later authorized a French edition
of 'A Wonder-Book' and bought a copy in Marseille while on a European
vacation in 1859. He joked in his journal about the purchase of "the
two volumes of the 'Livre des Merveilles', by a certain author of my
acquaintance."


                           External links
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*
*
* [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32242 'A Wonder Book for Girls
& Boys'], illustrated by Walter Crane (1893)
*


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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wonder-Book_for_Girls_and_Boys