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The Scottish social anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854–1941) first published The Golden Bough in 1890. A seminal two-volume work (reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection), it revolutionised the study of ancient religion through comparative analysis of mythology, rituals and superstitions around the world. Following the completion in 1915 of the revised twelve-volume third edition (also available in this series), Frazer found that he had more to say and further evidence to present. Published in 1936, Aftermath was conceived as a supplement to The Golden Bough, offering his additional findings on such topics as magic, royal and priestly taboos, sacrifice, reincarnation, and all manner of supernatural beliefs spanning cultures, continents and millennia. Sealing Frazer's profound contribution to the study of religion and folklore, this work remains an important text for scholars of anthropology and the history of ideas.

This work by Sir James Frazer (1854–1941) is widely considered to be one of the most important early texts in the fields of psychology and anthropology. At the same time, by applying modern methods of comparative ethnography to the classical world, and revealing the superstition and irrationality beneath the surface of the classical culture which had for so long been a model for Western civilisation, it was extremely controversial. Frazer was greatly influenced by E. B. Tylor's Primitive Culture (also reissued in this series), and by the work of the biblical scholar William Robertson Smith, to whom the first edition is dedicated. The twelve-volume third edition, reissued here, was greatly revised and enlarged, and published between 1911 and 1915; the two-volume first edition (1890) is also available in this series. Volume 5 (1914) considers the oriental roots of the Greek myths of Adonis and Attis

"This is a fully annotated edition of selected letters by (and in some cases to) Sir J.G. Frazer (1854-1941), the eminent Scottish 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. Frazer wrote thousands of letters to friends and colleagues, who included such prominent figures as Edmund Gosse, A.E. Housman, and Bronislaw Malinowski. Along with H.G. Wells, Frazer was a leading voice of secularism in the English-speaking world in the first half of the last century; The Golden Bough has been in print continuously since its publication. This generous selection of correspondence offers an unparalleled insight into the thinking of much of educated Britain and Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, and also throws light upon the composition of The Golden Bough itself."--Jacket