James George Frazer

Sir James George Frazer, a Scottish social anthropologist and folklorist, helped shape the early study of mythology and comparative religion. Born in Glasgow on 1 January 1854 to Katherine Brown and chemist Daniel F. Frazer, he attended Springfield and Larchfield academies in Helensburgh. After studying at the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Cambridge, he graduated with honours in classics—his dissertation later became *The Growth of Plato's Ideal Theory*—and remained a Classics Fellow for life. He also studied law at the Middle Temple but never practised. Frazer was elected to a Trinity Fellowship four times and spent most of his career there, except for 1907–1908 at the University of Liverpool. Knighted in 1914, a public lectureship in social anthropology was established in his honour at Cambridge, Oxford, Glasgow, and Liverpool in 1921. From 1930 onward, he was severely visually impaired if not blind. He and his wife, Lilly, died within hours of each other on 7 May 1941 in Cambridge, England, and are buried at the St Giles (Ascension Parish) Burial Ground there.

Frazer is often seen as an atheist due to his criticism of Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism, in *The Golden Bough*, though later writings and unpublished materials suggest an ambivalent relationship with Neoplatonism and Hermeticism. In 1896, he married Elizabeth "Lilly" Grove, a writer whose father was from Alsace; she later adapted *The Golden Bough* into a children’s book, *The Leaves from the Golden Bough*. His sister Isabella Katherine Frazer married mathematician John Steggall.

His expertise lay in myth and religion. Frazer rarely travelled beyond Italy and Greece, relying instead on ancient histories and questionnaires sent to missionaries and imperial officials worldwide. His interest in social anthropology was sparked by reading E. B. Tylor’s *Primitive Culture* (1871) and encouraged by biblical scholar William Robertson Smith, who compared Old Testament elements with early Hebrew folklore. Frazer was the first to detail relations between myths and rituals, though his idea of an annual Year-King sacrifice has not been supported by fieldwork. Nonetheless, *The Golden Bough*—his study of ancient cults, rites, and myths, including parallels with early Christianity—remained influential for decades. The first edition (two volumes) appeared in 1890, a second (three volumes) in 1900, and a third (twelve volumes) finished in 1915, with a supplemental thirteenth volume in 1936. A single-volume abridged version, largely compiled by his wife, was published in 1922, omitting some controversial material on Christianity. The work influenced fields beyond academia, inspiring psychologists and psychiatrists; Sigmund Freud frequently cited Frazer’s *Totemism and Exogamy* in his own *Totem and Taboo*. The symbolic cycle of life, death, and rebirth Frazer discerned in myths captivated artists and poets, most notably T. S. Eliot in *The Waste Land* (1922).

Late-20th-century scholars criticised Frazer’s pioneering work. In the 1980s, social anthropologist Edmund Leach published critical articles, including a lead piece in *Anthropology Today* vol. 1 (1985), objecting to the broad comparisons drawn from widely separated cultures—though he often relied on the abridged edition, which lacks supporting archaeological details. In 1973, J. D. Hawkins praised a focused study of Hittite cultus in Nerik, noting its methodical use of documentary evidence “in a way that would have been unfamiliar to the late Sir James Frazer.” More recently, *The Golden Bough* has been criticised for imperialist, anti-Catholic, classist, and racist elements, including Frazer’s assumption that European peasants, Aboriginal Australians, and Africans represented fossilised earlier stages of cultural evolution.

Another major work is Frazer’s six-volume commentary on the Greek traveller Pausanias’ description of 2nd-century AD Greece. Though archaeological excavations have since expanded knowledge, scholars still value his detailed historical and topographical discussions and his eyewitness accounts of late-19th-century Greece.

Among the most influential parts of the third edition of *The Golden Bough* is Frazer’s theory of cultural evolution, which was not absolute and could reverse. He broadly described three (or possibly four) spheres through which cultures pass over time: from magic, to religion, to science. This classification diverged from earlier anthropological models, such as Auguste Comte’s, because Frazer saw magic as initially separate from religion and not invariably followed by it.