This is a fully annotated edition of selected letters by (and in some cases to) Sir J. G. Frazer (1854-1941), the eminent anthropologist, classicist, and historian of religion. Frazer was read by virtually everyone working in those fields in the first third of the twentieth century. His great work, The Golden Bough, offered a grand vision of humanity's mental and spiritual evolution - from vain attempts to compel the gods to do our bidding (which Frazer called magic) through equally vain attempts to propitiate the gods through prayer and sacrifice (his characterization of religion) to rationality and science. His richly varied correspondence with prominent figures such as Edmund Gosse, A. E. Housman, and Bronislaw Malinowski, among others, offers an unparalleled insight into British intellectual life of the time, and also throws light upon the composition of The Golden Bough itself.
An edition of selected letters by (and in some cases to) Sir J. G. Frazer (1854-1941), the eminent anthropologist and historian of religion, and author of The Golden Bough. It offers an invaluable insight into British intellectual life at the turn of the century, and also illuminates the composition, and reception, of The Golden Bough itself.
No one more competent than Ackerman, the lauded biographer of Frazer (1987), could have edited these letters with such skill and familiarity. The accurate transcriptions are uncensored. A highly informative, lucidly written, introduction illuminates their intellectual context. A selective biographical list of correspondents is welcome... In short required reading for any competent historian of religion.
