Thomas Bulfinch in the context of "Newton, Massachusetts"

The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (retitled The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion in its second edition) is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough was first published in two volumes in 1890; in three volumes in 1900; and in twelve volumes in the third edition, published 1906–1915. It has also been published in several different one-volume abridgments. The work was for a wide literate audience raised on tales as told in such publications as Thomas Bulfinch's The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855). The influence of The Golden Bough on contemporary European literature and thought has been substantial.

Bulfinch's Mythology is a collection of tales from myth and legend rewritten for a general readership by the American Latinist and banker Thomas Bulfinch, published after his death in 1867. The work was a successful popularization of Greek mythology for English-speaking readers.

Carl J. Richard comments (with John Talbot of Brigham Young University concurring) that it was "one of the most popular books ever published in the United States and the standard work on classical mythology for nearly a century", until the release of classicist Edith Hamilton's 1942 Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. By 1987, there were more than 100 editions of Bulfinch's Mythology in the National Union Catalog, and in a survey of amazon.com in November 2014 there were 229 print editions and 19 e‑books. Talbot opined that, of the many available, Richard P. Martin's 1991 edition is "by far the most useful and extensive critical treatment".