The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Notes about the Text

In 1949, when this book was originally published, all of the notes to the text were placed at the bottom of each page as footnotes. Campbell used these notes for a variety of purposes:

To provide a quick, parenthetical comment

To give a full source citation or discuss the source material itself

To refer, hypertextually, to earlier or later passages within the book

Occasionally, to provide an extended discussion of a related topic somewhat secondary to his primary argument, which occasionally led to notes that spilled over several pages

There was no distinction among these different kinds of notes in earlier editions of this work.

As we prepared the third edition of The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 2008, we made the choice to handle these different types of notes with distinct styles, to make it easier for the reader to use and appreciate them as Campbell intended.

The short parenthetical comments we retained as footnotes. In this ebook edition, those are designated with an asterisk.*

The citations we moved to the end of the book as endnotes. In this edition, endnotes are designated with a number set in square brackets.^[1] In addition, we updated many of the citations to more current editions of the books to which Campbelll was referring and added citations in the those cases where Campbell had not provided a source. (For a full rundown on the sources for this book, see Richard Buchan's excellent Annotated Bibliography.)

For the hypertextual references, we have joyfully participated in one of the ebook format's great advantages and transformed them into links within the text itself. This is a hyperlink within the text.

For the longer, more metatextual notes, we set the whole of the comment off as a sidebar, to allow the reader to explore Campbell's thoughts in a coherent fashion without disturbing the flow of the main text.

This is a sidebar. Occasionally, these are placed to the side of the sections of the main text on which Campbell is commenting. Most often, however, these are placed between paragraphs in the text where we felt that Campbell's commentary would be most helpful.

Aside from added source citations, all of the various notes are Campbell's. Where we have added commentary, we have set it in square brackets: [This is an example of editorial commentary. — Ed.]

We hope that all of these changes will add to your appreciation and enjoyment of Campbell's masterpiece.

Footnotes

* This is an example of a footnote.

Endnotes

[1] This is an example of an endnote.