[ MISS RAGOZIN’S PARAPHRASE]
Tales of the Heroic Ages. Siegfried, the Hero of the North, and Beowulf, the Hero of the Anglo-Saxons, by Zenaïde A. Ragozin. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York and London, 1898. 8o, Beowulf, pp. 211–323, with Note at p. 323, and with four illustrations by George T. Tobin.
School Edition, New York, W. B. Harison, 1900.
A Paraphrase in English Prose.
The Author, and the Aim of her Book.
Miss Zenaïde Alexeievna Ragozin, a Russian by birth, an American by adoption, has devoted herself to the popularization of history and mythology. In the series Stories of the Nations, she has published, The Story of Chaldea, The Story of Assyria, The Story of Media, Babylon, and Persia, The Story of Vedic India. Of late she has turned her attention to the mythology of the various European nations, and has written of Siegfried, Frithjof, and Roland.
The object of her work may be given in her own words:—
‘(The series is) intended as parallel reading to history, and planned to illustrate history. . . . Great changes are coming over the schools, . . . changes in the right direction, which may shortly amount to a revolution, when there will be no reason why these Tales of the Heroic Ages should not, although addressed to young people at large, find a place, if not in the school curriculum, at least in the wide margin of so-called ‘Supplementary Reading.’ May they prove acceptable, not alone to the young, to whom they are specially addressed, but also, as has been felicitously said, to “the old with young tastes.”’ —Pages xx, xxii.