[5] The book is a prose recounting of myths and stories from three eras: Greek and Roman mythology, King Arthur legends and medieval romances.
[7][8] In the preface to The Age of Fable he states "Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation.
"[9] Despite this, the Mythology did actually displace earlier, and more comprehensive, school textbooks in the United States such as Andrew Tooke's 1698 Pantheon, an English translation of François Pomey's [ca; de; fr] 1659 Latin Pantheum Mysticum.
[10] Five Colleges associate and classics teacher Marie S. Cleary described The Age of Fable as an "abridged, bowdlerized, and rearranged Ovid", a description that was also applied by Victor Bers in his overview of mythographic literature in Yale Review in 1985.
[11][2] Most of the material in it was drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses, mainly in much the same arrangement including the story of Prometheus followed by Apollo and Daphne, Arachne being linked to Niobe, and Pythagoras following the classical myths.
[5] Bulfinch added to the stories what he termed "poetical citations", drawn from the works of 40 poets (all but three of whom, Longfellow, Lowell, and Bullfinch's brother Stephen Greenleaf, were British).