The Hellenism of Mary Renault

Best known for her historical novels—The Last of the Wine (1956), The King Must Die (1958), The Bull from the Sea (1962), The Mask of Apollo (1966), and Fire from Heaven (1969)—Mary Renault’s works have often appeared to readers as collateral reading to Greek literature. She is, doubtless, one of the most creative historical novelists of our era and the only bona fide Hellenist in twentieth-century fiction. What is less well known is that Mary Renault’s earlier works, written between 1939 and 1953—among them Promise of Love (1939), Return to Night (1947), and The Charioteer (1953)—were con­temporary pieces, not concerned with antiquity. Covering the entire range of Miss Renault’s work, Bernard Dick’s pene­trating study analyzes the early works and shows they were filled with classical allusions and dominated by Greek ideals of friendship.