Mythical creatures drawn largely from medieval travellers' tales, but encompassing civilisations from the Sumerians to the Wild West. A dictionary? No, this is really an astonishing ark filled with beasts from a fabulous zoo far more varied and entertaining than anything from ordinary natural history. From Abaia and Abath to Ziz and Zu, from the microscopic Gigelorum that nests in a mite's ear to the giant serpent Jormungandor who encircles the whole globe, there are beasts from every corner of man's imagination: the light-hearted Fearsome Critters of lumberjack tales find a place alongside the Sirrush of Babylon and the Winged Bulls of Assyria. Some of the fabulous beasts turn out to be real creatures in disguise - a Cameleopard is a kind of glamourised giraffe -while others are almost, but not quite, human. Among the six hundred entries are some which are full-scale essays in their own right, as on Phoenix or Giants; and just in case it seems as though the authors dreamt up the entire book, there is a detailed list of books for the would-be hunter in this mythical jungle.
Author
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. Richard William Barber is a prominent British historian who has been writing and publishing in the field of medieval history and literature ever since his student days. He has specialised in the Arthurian legend, beginning with a general survey, Arthur of Albion, in 1961, which is still in print in a revised edition. His other major interest is historical biography; he has published on Henry Plantagenet (1964) and among his other books is the standard biography of Edward the Black Prince, Edward Prince of Wales and Aquitaine. The interplay between history and literature was the theme of The Knight and Chivalry, for which he won the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1971 and he returned to this in The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief (2004); this was widely praised in the UK press, and had major reviews in The New York Times and The Washington Post. His other career has been as a publisher. In 1969 he helped to found The Boydell Press, which later became Boydell & Brewer Ltd, one of the leading publishers in medieval studies, and he is currently group managing director. In 1989, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, in association with the University of Rochester, started the University of Rochester Press in upstate New York. The group currently publishes over 200 titles a year.
