author
Charles Mills Gayley
1858–1932
Born in Shanghai to American missionary parents, this longtime University of California, Berkeley professor helped shape the study of English and classical literature on campus. He was also a prolific editor and critic whose books brought myth, poetry, and literary tradition to generations of readers.
2 Audiobooks
Francis Beaumont: Dramatist A Portrait, with Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean, And of His Association with John Fletcher
by Charles Mills Gayley
The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2nd ed.) (1911) Based Originally on Bulfinch's "Age of Fable" (1855)
by Charles Mills Gayley, Thomas Bulfinch
About the author
Raised partly in California after his family left China, he studied at the University of Michigan and in Europe before joining the University of California, Berkeley, in 1889. Over the next four decades he became one of the university's most influential literary scholars, serving as a professor of English and classics and later as academic dean.
He is especially remembered for helping build Berkeley's English department and for his lively interest in mythology, poetry, and the broad history of literature. His published work included studies of classic stories and literary traditions, as well as anthologies and teaching texts that were widely used in their day.
His reputation lasted well beyond his lifetime: Berkeley's annual Charles Mills Gayley Lecture was named in his honor, reflecting the lasting mark he left on the study of literature at the university.