August 12 - Edith Hamilton

Author and teacher Edith Hamilton was born on August 12, 1867, in Dresden, Germany, and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She attended Bryn Mawr College and in 1895 became the first woman to study at the University of Munich in Germany. She then became headmistress of Bryn Mawr Preparatory School for Girls in Baltimore, where she became known as a classicist during 26 years of teaching. Upon retiring, she moved to New York, wrote scholarly articles on Greek drama and myths, and, at age 62, published her first book, The Greek Way (1930), which compared life in ancient Greece to that in modern Greece. It was followed by The Roman Way (1932), which similarly addressed Roman life. In 1942 Hamilton published Mythology, which retells stories of Greek, Roman and Norse mythology via the literature of the classics. Today it remains a key introduction to myths at the high school and university levels. She traveled to Greece for the first time in 1957, at age 90, where the city of Athens made her an honorary citizen.