Josephine Preston Peabody

(1874 – 1922)

Charles Madison Curry and Erle Elsworth Clippinger in their Children's Literature (1920, 1921) give the following introduction to this book:

The little book of Old Greek Folk Stories, by Josephine P. Peabody, is especially valuable, not only for its fine version of many of the more interesting myths, but because it supplements the dozen retold by Hawthorne is his Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Tales.

Josephine Preston Peabody was born in Brooklyn in 1874. She was educated at Radcliife. For the period of 1901-03 she served as an instructor in English literature at Wellesley College. In 1906, she married a Harvard professor, Lionel Marks, and thereafter made her home in Cambridge.

In addition to this book for children, she also wrote poetry and verse drama. Volumes of poetry include The Wayfarers (1898), The Singing Leaves (1903), and The Harvest Moon (1916). Among her dramas in verse are Fortune and Men's Eyes (1900), Marlowe (1901), The Piper (1909), and The Wolf of Gubbio (1913). Of these, The Piper was the most highly acclaimed. A dramatic retelling of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, it took top prize at the Stratford Play Competition in 1910.