Today it is probably read as much for its literary merits as for its anthropological content.įrazer was an inductivist hence, his work is characterized by a sparsity of theory and much information. One reason for the great success of The Golden Bough is its excellent, if ornate, Victorian prose style. A second, expanded edition appeared in 1900, and a third, much expanded edition in 1911-1915. The first edition of The Golden Bough appeared in 1890. To obtain desired information he prepared a questionnaire on "the manners, customs, religions, superstitions, etc., of uncivilized or semi-civilized peoples" (1887). He obtained ethnographic information from the accounts of travelers, missionaries, and colonial administrators.
He spent all his life in the library, working 12, often 15, hours a day, almost everyday. Frazer's interest in totemism derived from Smith's invitation to write the article on the subject for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1888).įrazer never did fieldwork. Robertson Smith, who stimulated his interest in comparative religion. His results have been criticized on the grounds that he took customs out of cultural context and that many of the customs compared were only superficially similar.Įarly in his career as a fellow at Cambridge, Frazer met W. He borrowed Tylor's comparative method and developed his own method of comparison of customs of peoples of all times and places, which he retained throughout his lifelong research. Frazer decided that ancient rituals and myths could be illuminated by examination of similar customs of modern peoples living in a "savage" or "barbarous" stage. He remained at Cambridge the rest of his life, except for an appointment as professor of social anthropology at Liverpool University in 1907, which he resigned after a year.įrazer continued his interest in classics, editing Sallust's Catilina et lugurtha (1884), translating Pausanias's Description of Greece (1898), and editing and translating Ovid's Fasti (1929).įrazer's early classical interests were considerably broadened through acquaintance with Sir Edward Tylor's Primitive Culture.
He continued his studies in classics at Trinity College at Cambridge and was elected a fellow of the college in 1879. He attended Glasgow University (1869-1874), where his major interest was the classics. James Frazer was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on Jan.
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