The best books for following mythical beasts through time

This first complete English translation of a twelfth-century Latin bestiary has served me well as a partial map for following mythical beasts through time—from when the unicorn, griffin, and other fantastic creatures were considered part of God’s animal kingdom. T.  H. White supplements his translation of the moralized Christian bestiary with his own learned and entertaining footnotes and afterword. His “Family Tree” graph of Western animal studies highlights classical and medieval authors and ends with “Sir Thomas Browne’s Vulgar Errors,” the end of bestiary lore and the beginning of modern biology.

Don’t be scared off by this 1646 book. It’s essential for anyone who follows mythical beasts through time. One of the best-known parts of Browne’s influential book is Book III: “Of divers popular and received Tenets concerning Animals, which examined, prove either false or dubious.” By discrediting the classical and medieval authorities that perpetuated them, he considers the griffin, basilisk, unicorn, amphisbaena, and phoenix to be “fabulous,” thus separating them from the actual animal kingdom after centuries of general belief.

The now obscure Alexander Ross, “Champion of the Ancients,” refuted Browne’s book virtually point for point in his 1652 Arcana Microcosmi. Ross lost that Battle of the Books between the ancients and the moderns. Mythical animals rarely appeared in eighteenth-century literature, but they rose again a century later.

The unicorn and the dragon are still the two most ubiquitous animals to emerge from the host of fantastic creatures that began spreading through popular books, art, and film in the late 1970s. Years before the unicorn’s commercial popularity, Odell Shepard’s classic book, The Lore of the Unicorn, traced the millennia-long cultural transformations of the mysterious animal, beginning with an early traveler’s tale of the wild asses of India. 

I admire Shepard’s blending of personal voice with wide-ranging research and commentary. He opens his introduction with, “On the table before me, there lies a long straight wand of ivory,” a walking stick made of narwhal tusk, which for centuries had been accepted as unicorn horn.

As the late 1970s popularity of fantastic creatures continued to spread, professor Malcolm South edited a research guide that follows twenty imaginary animals and creatures through time. The substantial 1987 book is highly schematic in South’s earnest attempt to sum up what was known about particular mythical beasts and imaginary creatures during their recent surge in popularity. Illustrations, a glossary, and even a taxonomy supplement specialists’ articles and bibliographies about creatures from the unicorn and other major mythical animals to the vampire and werewolf, giants, and fairies. 

All my previous recommended books are cited in South’s sourcebook. I’ve been much indebted to it for research leads over the years and highly recommend it as a standard source for any reader following mythical beasts and other creatures.

I love this lavishly produced 2013 book. It overarches my other recommended “best books for following mythical beasts through time.” Titles of early chapters—“What is an Imaginary Animal?” “Every Real Animal is Imaginary,” and “Every Imaginary Animal is Real”—encompass the book’s interplay between nature’s animals, imaginary ones, and human beings.

Open Imaginary Animals anywhere to get a glimpse of its variety and scope. Boria Sax’s interdisciplinary, learned, and conversational text sweeps across folklore, legends, myths, and natural history of worldwide cultures from antiquity to today. Accompanying art, much in color, spans a Lascaux cave painting and a photograph of a human-looking robot; throughout are fantastic creatures in paintings, early natural history engravings, and other pictorial forms.

As Dr. Sax writes, “Imaginary creatures can be overwhelming in their multiplicity.”