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Sir James George Frazer and The Golden Bough

Information about the author, the book and its publication history

Sir James George Frazer

Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) was a Scottish anthropologist. He researched and wrote on myth and religion. The Golden Bough, is Frazer's greatest and best known work. He was knighted in 1914.

Even though in his notes to The Waste Land T. S. Eliot acknowledged a great debt to Frazer's The Golden Bough Frazer never could make sense of Eliot's poem.

The Golden Bough

An on-line copy of the 1922 abridged edition of The Golden Bough is available at the Bartleby.com website. There are two different presentations there. One has a chapter per webpage and another version has each page of the book on a seperate webpage. The URLs are:

By chapter:

http://www.bartleby.com/196/

By page:

http://www.bartleby.com/196/pages/page1.html

The Golden Bough's publication history

Most of the information about these editions comes from The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion

Edition	Published	Sections	Volumes	Publisher
First edition	1890	4	2	Macmillan (London)
Second edition	1900	4	3	Macmillan (London)
Third edition	Volumes published over the period 1906-15	7	12 (incuding index)	Macmillan (London)
Abridged edition	1922	69 chapters	1	Macmillan (London)
Aftermath, A Supplement to The Golden Bough [supplement to the third edition]	1936	?	1	?