The Penguin Book of Mermaids

Dive into centuries of mermaid lore with these captivating tales from around the world.

A Penguin Classic

Among the oldest and most popular mythical beings, mermaids and other merfolk have captured the imagination since long before Ariel sold her voice to a sea witch in the beloved Disney film adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” As far back as the eighth century B.C., sailors in Homer’s Odyssey stuffed wax in their ears to resist the Sirens, who lured men to their watery deaths with song. More than two thousand years later, the gullible New York public lined up to witness a mummified “mermaid” specimen that the enterprising showman P. T. Barnum swore was real.

The Penguin Book of Mermaids is a treasury of such tales about merfolk and water spirits from different cultures, ranging from Scottish selkies to Hindu water-serpents to Chilean sea fairies. A third of the selections are published here in English for the first time, and all are accompanied by commentary that explores their undercurrents, showing us how public perceptions of this popular mythical hybrid–at once a human and a fish–illuminate issues of gender, spirituality, ecology, and sexuality.

For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About the Contributors

Cristina Bacchilega is a professor and the graduate program director in the Department of English at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Her published works include Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies, Legendary Hawai’i and the Politics of Place: Tradition, Translation, and Tourism, and Fairy Tales Transformed? Twenty-First-Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder.

Marie Alohalani Brown is an associate professor and the undergraduate chair in the Department of Religion at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Her first book, Facing the Spears of Change: The Life and Legacy of John Papa ‘I’i, won the Palapala Po’okela Award for the best book on Hawaiian language, culture, and history.