Joseph Campbell Popular Books

Joseph Campbell Biography & Facts

Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth. Since the publication of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell's theories have been applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. His philosophy has been summarized by his own often repeated phrase: "Follow your bliss." He gained recognition in Hollywood when George Lucas credited Campbell's work as influencing his Star Wars saga.Campbell's approach to folklore topics such as myth and his influence on popular culture has been the subject of criticism, especially from academic folklorists. Life Background Joseph Campbell was born in White Plains, New York, on March 26, 1904, the elder son of hosiery importer and wholesaler Charles William Campbell, from Waltham, Massachusetts, and Josephine (née Lynch), from New York. Campbell was raised in an upper-middle-class Irish Catholic family; he related that his paternal grandfather Charles had been "a peasant" who came to Boston from County Mayo in Ireland, and became the gardener and caretaker at the Lyman estate at Waltham, where his son Charles William Campbell grew up and became a successful salesman at a department store prior to establishing his hosiery business. During his childhood, he moved with his family to New Rochelle, New York. In 1919, a fire destroyed the family home in New Rochelle, killing his maternal grandmother and injuring his father, who tried to save her.In 1921, Campbell graduated from the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. While at Dartmouth College he studied biology and mathematics, but decided that he preferred the humanities. He transferred to Columbia University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature in 1925 and a Master of Arts degree in medieval literature in 1927. At Dartmouth he had joined Delta Tau Delta. An accomplished athlete, he received awards in track and field events, and, for a time, was among the fastest half-mile runners in the world.In 1924, Campbell traveled to Europe with his family. On the ship during his return trip he encountered the messiah elect of the Theosophical Society, Jiddu Krishnamurti; they discussed Indian philosophy, sparking in Campbell an interest in Hindu and Indian thought. In 1927, he received a fellowship from Columbia University to study in Europe. Campbell studied Old French, Provençal, and Sanskrit at the University of Paris and the University of Munich. He learned to read and speak French and German.On his return to Columbia University in 1929, Campbell expressed a desire to pursue the study of Sanskrit and modern art in addition to medieval literature. Lacking faculty approval, Campbell withdrew from graduate studies. Later in life he jested that it is a sign of incompetence to have a PhD in the liberal arts, the discipline covering his work. The Great Depression With the arrival of the Great Depression, Campbell spent the next five years (1929–1934) living in a rented shack in Woodstock, New York. There, he contemplated the next course of his life while engaged in intensive and rigorous independent study. He later said that he "would divide the day into four three-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the three-hour periods, and free one of them ... I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day. And this went on for five years straight."Campbell traveled to California for a year (1931–1932), continuing his independent studies and becoming a close friend of the budding writer John Steinbeck and his wife Carol. Campbell had met Carol's sister, Idell, on a Honolulu cruise and she introduced him to the Steinbecks. Campbell had an affair with Carol. On the Monterey Peninsula, Campbell, like John Steinbeck, fell under the spell of the marine biologist Ed Ricketts (the model for "Doc" in Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row as well as central characters in several other novels). Campbell lived for a while next door to Ricketts, participated in professional and social activities at his neighbor's, and accompanied him, along with Xenia and Sasha Kashevaroff, on a 1932 journey to Juneau, Alaska on the Grampus. Campbell began writing a novel centered on Ricketts as a hero but, unlike Steinbeck, did not complete his book.Bruce Robison writes that Campbell would refer to those days as a time when everything in his life was taking shape. ... Campbell, the great chronicler of the "hero's journey" in mythology, recognized patterns that paralleled his own thinking in one of Ricketts's unpublished philosophical essays. Echoes of Carl Jung, Robinson Jeffers and James Joyce can be found in the work of Steinbeck and Ricketts as well as Campbell. Campbell continued his independent reading while teaching for a year in 1933 at the Canterbury School in Connecticut, during which time he also attempted to publish works of fiction. While teaching at the Canterbury School, Campbell sold his first short story Strictly Platonic to Liberty magazine. Sarah Lawrence College In 1934, Campbell accepted a position as Professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. In 1938, he married one of his former students, the dancer-choreographer Jean Erdman. For most of their 49 years of marriage they shared a two-room apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City. In the 1980s they also purchased an apartment in Honolulu and divided their time between the two cities. They did not have any children. Early in World War II, Campbell attended a lecture by the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer; the two men became good friends. After Zimmer's death, Campbell was given the task of editing and posthumously publishing Zimmer's papers, which he would do over the following decade. In 1955–1956, as the last volume of Zimmer's posthumous treatise, The Art of Indian Asia, Its Mythology and Transformations, was finally about to be published, Campbell took a sabbatical from Sarah Lawrence College and traveled, for the first time, to Asia. He spent six months in southern Asia (mostly India) and another six in East Asia (mostly Japan). This year had a profound influence on his thinking about Asian religion and myth, and also on the necessity for teaching comparative mythology to a larger, non-academic audience.In 1972, Campbell retired from Sarah Lawrence College, after having taught there for 38 years. Later life and death Campbell attended a Grateful Dead concert in 1986, and marveled that "Everyone has just lost themselves in everybody else here!" With the Grateful Dead, Campbell put on a conference called "Ritual and Rapture from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead".Campbell di.... Discover the Joseph Campbell popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Joseph Campbell books.

Best Seller Joseph Campbell Books of 2024

  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz synopsis, comments

    The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

    L. Frank Baum, W. W. Denslow & Michael Patrick Hearn

    Originally published over 115 years ago, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has captivated readers of all ages with its remarkable narrative and lovable characters. Although incredibly pop...

  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz synopsis, comments

    The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

    L. Frank Baum

    Join Dorothy Gale, Toto, and all of her friends as they explore the incredible land of Oz. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is American's most enduring fairy tale. From the moment Doroth...

  • An Awakened Life synopsis, comments

    An Awakened Life

    Christopher Titmuss

    In an awakened life, our hearts are open, steady and purposeful. Most people today have a greater income, as well as more goods and labour saving devices, than any other generatio...

  • A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge synopsis, comments

    A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

    George Berkeley

    "A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge" is one of Berkeley's best known works and in it Berkeley expounds upon this idea of subjective idealism, which...

  • New Poems Book One synopsis, comments

    New Poems Book One

    Charles Bukowski

    Charles Bukowski was one of America's bestknown writers and one of its most influential and imitated poets. Although he published over 45 books of poetry, hundreds of his poems...

  • Perfect Executive Health synopsis, comments

    Perfect Executive Health

    Dr Andrew Melhuish

    The many changes in today's workplace brought about by recession and technical innovation mean that executives and indeed everyone in employment are working longer hours with...

  • Jesus and the Lost Goddess synopsis, comments

    Jesus and the Lost Goddess

    Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

    Why Were the Teachings of the Original Christians Brutally Suppressed by the Roman Church? Because they portray Jesus and Mary Magdalene as mythic figures based on the Pagan Godman...

  • The Seekers synopsis, comments

    The Seekers

    John Densmore & Viggo Mortensen

    The iconic drummer of The Doors investigates his own relationship with creativity and explores the meaning of artistry with other artists and performers in this compelling and spel...

  • Joseph Campbell On Myth and Mythology synopsis, comments

    Joseph Campbell On Myth and Mythology

    Richard L. Sartore

    A selection of readings by Joseph Campbell, including the editor's comments on the influence of mythology on personal and societal behaviour and the evolution of the creative mytho...

  • Mass Psychology synopsis, comments

    Mass Psychology

    Sigmund Freud

    Freud's religious unbeliefs are too easily dismissed as the standard scientific rationalism of the twentiethcentury intellectual, yet he scorned the highminded humanism of his cont...

  • Strictly Me synopsis, comments

    Strictly Me

    Mark Ramprakash

    Mark Ramprakash is arguably the greatest English batsman of his generation, but he is also an enigma. He is among an elite group of players who have scored 100 firstclass centuries...

  • The Penguin Handbook of Ancient Religions synopsis, comments

    The Penguin Handbook of Ancient Religions

    Professor John Hinnells & Various contributors

    This overview of the religious customs of ancient cultures boasts an international selection of contributors, all of whom are leading scholars in their field. The cultural practice...

  • The Marvelous Land of Oz synopsis, comments

    The Marvelous Land of Oz

    L. Frank Baum & John R. Neill

    "As a writer, Baum rarely knew when to quit, unfurling marvel after marvel..."The New Yorker​ Originally published 115 years ago, this lesserknown but equally enchanting sequel to ...

  • Causing Death and Saving Lives synopsis, comments

    Causing Death and Saving Lives

    Jonathan Glover

    The moral problems of abortion, infanticide, suicide, euthanasia, capital punshiment, war and othe lifeordeath choices.

  • An Outline of Psychoanalysis synopsis, comments

    An Outline of Psychoanalysis

    Sigmund Freud

    One of fifteen volumes in the new Freud series commissioned for Penguin by series editor Adam Phillips. Part of a plan to generate a new, nonspecialist Freud for a wide readership...

  • Deceptions and Myths of the Bible synopsis, comments

    Deceptions and Myths of the Bible

    Lloyd M. Graham

    Lloyd M. Graham is out to show that the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments as we know them, are not “holy” nor are they the “word of God” revealed. The stories of the Bible wer...

  • Eating Your Auntie Is Wrong synopsis, comments

    Eating Your Auntie Is Wrong

    Stephen Arnott

    Crossing continents and centuries Stephen Arnott brings us invaluable information about all kinds of bizarre regional customs from sexual practices to the received wisdom on canni...

  • Joseph Anthony Abruzzo v. Campbell Soup Company and Blue Ribbon Vending Co. synopsis, comments

    Joseph Anthony Abruzzo v. Campbell Soup Company and Blue Ribbon Vending Co.

    Superior Court of Pennsylvania No. 01362

    Per Curiam: Order of the Court En Banc reversed. Order of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia entering a nonsuit in favor of appellants is reinstated.

  • The Innateness of Myth synopsis, comments

    The Innateness of Myth

    Ritske Rensma

    Joseph Campbell (19041988) was one of the most wellknown and popular scholars of myth and comparative religion of the twentieth century. His work, however, has never fully received...

  • The Gospel of Ramakrishna synopsis, comments

    The Gospel of Ramakrishna

    Mahendra Nath Gupta

    This book is the collection of decades of talks between Ramakrishna and his disciples, devotees and visitors. Thus, it is a complete collection of his philosophic ideas, captured t...

  • Los aMores de mi vida synopsis, comments

    Los aMores de mi vida

    Luciana Lombardo

    Desde nuestros primeros amores nos relacionamos en la medida de nuestra carencia. No elegimos: buscamos reconocimiento. Buscamos con desesperación el halago que distrae, el cortejo...

  • Mythmaking synopsis, comments

    Mythmaking

    Maureen Murdock

    Bestselling Heroine’s Journey author Maureen Murdock invites readers to explore their personal story within the rich tapestry of human experience by examining the craft of memoir a...

  • Archetypes from Underground synopsis, comments

    Archetypes from Underground

    Lonny Harrison

    Archetypes from Underground: Notes on the Dostoevskian Self uncovers archetypal imagery in Dostoevsky’s stories and novels and argues that archetypes bring a new dimension to our u...

  • Oriental Mythology synopsis, comments

    Oriental Mythology

    Joseph Campbell & David Kudler

    Explore the power of myth as it flowered in AsiaIn this second volume of The Masks of God  Joseph Campbell's major work of comparative mythology the preemimenent mytholo...

  • The Transformational Power of Dreaming synopsis, comments

    The Transformational Power of Dreaming

    Stephen Larsen & Tom Verner

    An exploration of dreaming history, science, traditions, and practices from prehistory to today Examines ancient dream traditions from around the world, shamanic dreaming, and the ...

  • Cosmic Powers synopsis, comments

    Cosmic Powers

    John Joseph Adams

    A collection of original, epic science fiction stories by some of today’s best writersfor fans who want a little less science and a lot more actionand edited by twotime Hugo Award ...

  • The Golden Bough synopsis, comments

    The Golden Bough

    Sir James Frazer

    Sir James George Frazer (18541941) caught the popular imagination with his vast and enterprising comparative study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind, which in its third ed...

  • Sacred Mirrors synopsis, comments

    Sacred Mirrors

    Alex Grey, Ken Wilber & Carlo McCormick

    This unique series of paintings takes the viewer on a graphic, visionary journey through the physical, metaphysical, and spiritual anatomy of the self. From anatomically correct re...

  • The Comfort Crisis synopsis, comments

    The Comfort Crisis

    Michael Easter

    Discover the evolutionary mind and body benefits of living at the edges of your comfort zone and reconnecting with the wildfrom the New York Times bestselling author of Scarcity Br...

  • Susan Hill synopsis, comments

    Susan Hill

    Jonathan Noakes & Margaret Reynolds

    The Woman in Black, Strange Meeting, I'm the King of the Castle, A Little Bit of Singing and DancingIn Vintage Living Texts, teachers and students will find the essential guide...

  • The Book of Chuang Tzu synopsis, comments

    The Book of Chuang Tzu

    Chuang Tzu & Martin Palmer

    The Book of Chuang Tzu draws together the stories, tales, jokes and anecdotes that have gathered around the figure of Chuang Tzu. One of the great founders of Taoism, Chaung Tzu li...

  • How The Secret Changed My Life synopsis, comments

    How The Secret Changed My Life

    Rhonda Byrne

    An aweinspiring compilation of the most uplifting and powerful reallife stories from readers of the worldwide bestseller The Secret. Discover how everyday people completely transfo...

  • Joseph David Campbell v. State Texas synopsis, comments

    Joseph David Campbell v. State Texas

    Tenth District, Waco Court of Appeals of Texas

    A jury convicted Joseph David Campbell of possession of cocaine, less than twentyeight grams, and assessed punishment at thirteen and onehalf years in prison and a $500 fine. See T...

  • The Power of Myth synopsis, comments

    The Power of Myth

    Joseph Campbell & Bill Moyers

    NATIONAL BESTSELLER  An extraordinary book that reveals how the themes and symbols of ancient narratives continue to bring meaning to birth, death, love, and war. The Po...

  • Conversational Selling synopsis, comments

    Conversational Selling

    Joseph C. Campbell

    Understanding the F.O.R.D. framework should be mandatory reading for all aspiring salespeople. Remember a salesperson's primary goal is to connect with the customer, build rapport ...

  • American Veda synopsis, comments

    American Veda

    Philip Goldberg

    A fascinating look at India’s remarkable impact on Western culture, this eyeopening popular history shows how the ancient philosophy of Vedanta and the mindbody methods of Yoga hav...

  • The Secret to Love, Health, and Money synopsis, comments

    The Secret to Love, Health, and Money

    Rhonda Byrne

    This indepth masterclass from the author of the groundbreaking bestseller The Secret illustrates how to apply the law of attraction to three of life’s most important areas: relatio...