Part of Time-Life’s lavishly illustrated The Enchanted World series, Giants and Ogres gathers myths, legends and folk traditions about beings who exist at the edge of the human world.

The book moves across European and Near Eastern traditions, drawing on Norse, Celtic, Germanic and other folklore to trace the shifting role of the giant in story. These figures are are bound to landscape, weather, memory, violence, kingship and the remnants of pre-Christian cosmologies; creatures who often represent a world more ancient than the societies telling stories about them.

Chapters including “Princes of the Cosmos,” “Protectors and Providers,” “A Deepening Enmity” and “The Twilight of Power” follow that movement from primordial prestige toward marginalisation and defeat. Throughout, the text is accompanied by full-page colour and monochrome illustrations, reproductions and visual retellings that give the book the feel of an unusually handsome folklore compendium rather than a conventional reference work.

Time-Life Books, Amsterdam, 1987. Second European English-language printing. Hardcover with dust jacket. Light shelf wear and minor edge wear to jacket; internally clean and bright, binding firm. Very good condition.