Francis James Child

Biography

Francis James Child was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His lifelong friend, scholar and social reformer Charles Eliot Norton, described Child's father, a sailmaker, as 'one of that class of intelligent and independent mechanics, which has had a large share of developing the character of our democratic community, as of old the same class had in Athens or in Florence.' The family was poor, but thanks to Boston's free public schools, Child was educated at Boston's grammar schools and The English High School.

His brilliance caught the attention of Epes Sargent Dixwell, principal of the Boston Latin School, who arranged a scholarship for Child to attend Harvard University. At Harvard, 'Frank' (nicknamed 'Stubby' on account of his short stature) excelled in all classes and read widely. He was soon recognized as 'the best writer, best speaker, best mathematician, the most accomplished person in knowledge of general literature.' He graduated in 1846, topping his class in all subjects, and was chosen Class Orator by his graduating class of sixty, who received his valedictory speech with 'tumultuous applause.'

Upon graduation Child was appointed tutor in mathematics at Harvard and in 1848 was transferred to a tutorship in history, political economy, and English literature. In 1848, Child published a critically annotated edition of Four Old Plays of the early English Renaissance, the first of its kind produced in America. A loan from Jonathan I. Bowditch enabled Child to study in Germany at the University of Göttingen, which conferred on him an honorary doctorate, and at Humboldt University, Berlin, where he heard lectures by the linguists Grimm.

In 1851, at age 26, Child succeeded Edward T. Channing as Harvard's Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, a position he held until Adams Sherman Hill was appointed in 1876. Harvard had at that time an enrollment of 382 undergraduates and a faculty of 14, including president James Walker.

The English and Scottish Popular Ballads

Child's largest undertaking grew out of the original English and Scottish Ballads volume in his British Poets series. In the 1860s he campaigned for public support to enable the Early English Text Society to obtain a copy of Percy's Folio and publish it, which they did in 1868. Child and Frederick James Furnivall then founded The Ballad Society to publish other early ballad collections, such as that of Samuel Pepys. In 1876, to retain Child, Harvard's president Charles William Eliot created the title of 'Professor of English' especially for him, freeing him from supervising oral recitations and correcting composition papers so he could have more time for research.

Thereafter, Child devoted himself to the comparative study of British vernacular ballads, using methods from historical comparative philology to arrive at the earliest attested versions. He believed folk ballads came from a more democratic time in the past when society was not so rigidly segregated into classes. He conceived 'the people' as comprising all classes of society, rich, middle, and poor. Child carried his investigations into ballads of languages other than English, engaging in extensive international correspondence, primarily with Danish literary historian Svend Grundtvig, whose twelve-volume compilation Danmarks gamle Folkeviser was the model for Child's resulting five-volume edition of some 305 English and Scottish ballads and their numerous variants.

In 1888, Child founded the American Folklore Society and served as its president. He died in Boston after completing his task, apart from a planned general introduction and bibliography.