About Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell was an American writer and the husband of Jean Erdman. 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 condition. 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. While teaching at the Canterbury School, Campbell sold his first short story Strictly Platonic to Liberty magazine. George Lucas was the first filmmaker to credit Campbell's influence. For years, ever since it was first published, the Bardo Thodol has been my constant companion, and to it I owe not only many stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights. Early in World War II, Campbell attended a lecture by the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer; the two men became good friends.
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