A hard cover edition of Campbell's major study of the mythology of the world's high civilizations over five millennia, inscribed and signed by the author. It includes nearly 450 illustrations. This is the 1974 Bollingen edition. It is used in "Very Good +" condition with minimal "foxing" along the page edges. There is no writing inside the book other than the inscription itself. The dust jacket is intact with a 1/4" long tear on the bottom of the front, a 1/2" long tear on the top of the front and a minor crease on the bottom of the back. The hard cover and interior pages are in great shape.Mythologist Joseph Campbell was a masterful storyteller, able to weave tales from every corner of the world into compelling, even spellbinding, narratives. His interest in comparative mythology began in childhood, when the young Joe Campbell was taken to see Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show at Madison Square Garden. He started writing articles on Native American mythology in high school, and the parallels between age-old myths and the mythic themes in literature and dreams became a lifelong preoccupation. Campbell's best-known work is The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), which became a New York Times paperback best-seller for Princeton in 1988 after Campbell's star turn on the Bill Moyers television program The Power of Myth. During his early years as a professor of comparative religion at Sarah Lawrence College, Campbell made the acquaintanc