¹ The clearest account of these remains and the complex history of their excavations is given in Mysteries of Diana: The Antiquities from Nemi in Nottingham Museums (Castle Museum; Nottingham, 1983).Google Scholar See also Coarelli, F., I santuari del Lazio in età repubblicana (Studi NIS Archeologia 7) (Rome, 1987), 165–85.Google Scholar

² GB ³, I, 1 (= vol. 1), 1.

³ For discussion of this cult and the office of the priest-king (held in the historical period by runaway slave), see Gordon, A.E., “The Cults of Aricia,” University of California Publications in Classical Archaeology, 2:1 (1934), 1–20,Google Scholar and Blagg, T.F.C., “The Cult and Sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis,” in M. Henig and A. King, Pagan Gods and Shrines of the Roman Empire, Monograph 8 (Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1986), 211–9.Google Scholar The practice of killing the king survived in some form into the Roman imperial period. Suetonius (Life of Gaius, 35) claims that the emperor, Gaius (37–41 AD), actually put up an opponent for a priestking who had, he thought, held power too long—an example, for Suetonius, of the emperor's mad jealousy of even his most lowly subjects. The practice is attested also by Pausanias in the second-century AD (Description of Greece II, 27, 4).

⁴ Anthropology Today, 1 (1985), 2–3.Google Scholar

⁵ Leach's particular target is the one-volume abridged version of The Golden Bough (London, 1922),Google ScholarPubMed which omits most of the archaeological information on the site included in the full-scale third edition. Leach much prefers the account given in that longer version. In fact, the inclusion of this archaeological material makes little difference to Frazer's image of the site, which remains remarkably consistent through all editions, both before and after his visit.

⁶ All quotations from Leach, “Reflections on a Visit to Nemi” (see n. 4).

⁷ Daedalus, 90 (1961), 371–99.Google Scholar See also “On the ‘Founding Fathers’: Frazer and Malinowski,” Encounter, 25 (1965), 24–36Google Scholar (reprinted, with further comments, in Current Anthropology, 7 (1966), 560–7).Google ScholarPubMed For a bibliography of other recent evaluations of Frazer, see Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 315.

⁸ Leach himself (“Golden Bough or Gilded Twig,” Daedalus, 90 (1961), 375–7Google Scholar) analyses GB ³, IV, 1 (= vol. 5), 102–3 against its source (Roth, W.E., North Queensland Ethnography Brisbane, 1903), paragraphs 81–83).Google Scholar A similar relationship with source material can be demonstrated in earlier editions: for example, GB ¹, 1:69–72 (compare, Biddulph, J., Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh [Calcutta, 1880], 103–6);Google ScholarGB ¹, 1:85 (compare, Dalton, E.T., Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal [Calcutta, 1872], 261).Google Scholar Unfortunately, Leach's interpretation of this and other aspects of Frazer's writing is undermined by his transparent disdain, even loathing, for his subject, whom he characterizes as a self-seeking lapdog of the Establishment, devoid of intellectual originality.

⁹ Robertson Smith was resident in Trinity from the end of 1883 to 1885, where he became close to Frazer. As editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he commissioned Frazer to write articles for the ninth edition, under the letters P, S, and T—from “Penates,” “Pericles,” and “Praefect” to (significantly) “Taboo” and “Totemism.” Smith died in 1894. In Leach's view (“Golden Bough or Gilded Twig,” Daedalus, 90 (1961), 373Google Scholar), this left Frazer without intellectual inspiration and he “thereafter created virtually no fresh work throughout the whole of his long life.” For a discussion of Frazer's relations with Robertson Smith, see Jones, R. Alun, “Robertson Smith and James Frazer on Religion,” in G. Stocking, Functionalism Histohcized: Essays in British Social Anthropology (History of Anthropology, no. 2) (Wisconsin, 1984), 31–58.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Leach follows the almost unanimous scholarly tradition in deriding Lilly Frazer (born Elizabeth Adelsdorfer, from Alsatian France, widow of Charles Grove before her marriage to Frazer) as a publicity crazed harridan, who dominated her reserved husband. Even the judicious Ackerman ends his biography by quoting the jibe of the Fellows of Trinity (a group not well known for their sympathy for the female sex) to the effect that her death only a few hours after Frazer ensured that she did “not allow him even one day's peace by himself”; see also the characterization, Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 124–6. This stereotype of the academic's wife (see also, for example, Lady Beazley, who is described by Ashmole, B., Proceedings of the British Academy (PBA), 56 (1970), 447–8,Google Scholar reprinted in Kurtz, D., ed., Beazley and Oxford [Oxford, 1985], 60–61) would itself be worth further study!Google Scholar

¹¹ Leach (“Golden Bough or Gilded Twig,” 383) typically finds an unworthy secret behind Harrison's interest in Frazer: “It seems clear that part of Jane Harrison's interest in The Golden Bough lay in the fact that she was fascinated by the brute sadism of primitive sacrifice.” For Harrison's career (which, in fact, had very little to do with Frazer's, despite their long residence in the same university), see Peacock, S.J., Jane Ellen Harrison: The Mask and the Self (New Haven and London, 1988),Google Scholar with the review by Beard, M., Times Literary Supplement, 01 27-02 2, 1989, 82.Google Scholar It is, of course, a highly implausible suggestion that in the nineteenth century the academic respectability of a Fellow of Trinity could have been promoted by the support of a woman—still less by the support of the eccentric Jane Harrison.

¹² See below, n. 28.

¹³ In addition to Ackerman and Fraser, see, for example, Evans-Pritchard, E., A History of Anthropological Thought (London, 1981), 132–52;Google Scholar R. Alun Jones, “Robertson Smith and Frazer.” It would be rash to deny that the higher intellectual context of Frazer's work had some bearing on his popular success; but there is little in the press reports cited below (pp. 212–6) to suggest that the distinction between magic and science, the inheritance of Hume, or an intellectualist view of religion touched the public consciousness. In fact, I suspect that it has proved difficult to explain the widespread popularity of The Golden Bough precisely because it has always been treated from a strictly academic standpoint. This article suggests a different route towards an explanation.

¹⁴ Both Ackerman and Fraser are much concerned with the development of Frazer's thought over the three editions of The Golden Bough and suggest that apparently minor changes in the treatment of Nemi and its cult may relate to a more fundamental revision of Frazer's theories. See, for example, Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 240–1 and Fraser, The Making of The Golden Bough, 160–7. Even if these revisions are as important as is suggested, they do not affect the prominence of Nemi in every edition.

¹⁵ GB ³, 1:1 (= vol. 1), 9–10.

¹⁶ Virgil, Aeneid, 6, 98–155, 183–211. Among the works in the vast literature on the Virgilian Bough, see Brooks, R.A., “Discolor Aura. Reflections on the Golden Bough,” American Journal of Philology, 74 (1953), 260–80;Google ScholarSegal, C.P., “Aeternum per Saecula Nomen, The Golden Bough and the Tragedy of History,” Ft. 1, Arion, 4 (1965), 617–57;Google Scholar Pt. 2, Arion, 5 (1966), 34–72; West, D., The Bough and the Gate (Exeter, 1987),Google Scholar reprinted in Harrison, S.J., Oxford Readings in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1990), 224–38.Google Scholar Note that I use The Golden Bough italics) to refer to the book and the Golden Bough (in roman type) to Virgil's branch.

¹⁷ Designed by J. H. Middleton (1846–96), director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. For Frazer's detailed instructions to the publisher on the appearance of the book, see Fraser, The Making of The Golden Bough, 53–4, 118.

¹⁸ GB ³, I:1 (= vol. 1), 9, n. 1. cites (in the original Greek) Strabo's description (Geography, 5, 3, 12): “The priest is always armed with a sword, looking around for the attacks, and ready to defend himself.” In the same passage Strabo mentions the sacred grove but not a particular tree with a particular bough that must be plucked. The only ancient source to mention such a particular bough is Servius (passage cited in n. 20). Even he does not suggest that the priest-king guarded the tree, merely that combat could take place only after the assailant had plucked the branch.

¹⁹ For full details of the painting, see Butlin, M. and Joll, E., The Paintings of J M. W. Turner (New Haven and London, 1984),Google Scholar no. 355 (cat. pp. 204–5; pi. 359). Frazer himself did not know the painting at first hand. He wrongly notes on his own copy of GB ² (Trinity College, Adv c 21 69): “The original is said to be in the public gallery at Dublin.” In fact it had always been housed in London museums (the National Gallery and then the Tate).

²⁰ Servius on Aeneid, 6, 136, translated bySmith, J.Z., “When the Bough Breaks,” chapter 10 of Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 23) (Leiden, 1978), 215 (with full discussion, 215–21). See also West, The Bough and the Gate, 226–7 (page reference from reprint).Google ScholarPubMed

²¹ Virgil, Aeneid, 6, 201–9. The passage, translated by Cecil Day-Lewis, describes Aeneas' discovery of the Golden Bough, led by two doves:

Then, when they [the doves] came to the mouth of foul-breathing Avemus, Swiftly they soared, went gliding through the soft air and settled, The pair of them, on a tree, the wished-for place, a tree Amid whose branches there gleamed a bright haze, a different colour—Gold. Just as in depth of winter the mistletoe blooms In the woods with its strange leafage, a parasite on the tree, Hanging its yellow-green berries about the smooth round boles: So looked the bough of gold leaves upon that ilex dark, And in a gentle breeze the gold-foil foliage rustled.

Lang was a critic of Frazer almost as vitriolic as Leach. This particular objection is from Magic and Religion (London, 1901), 215,Google Scholar a book which amounted to an extended review of The Golden Bough. For further discussion, see Smith, “When the Bough Breaks,” 224; West, The Bough and the Gate, 227–30 (page reference from reprint); and (on the context of Lang's opposition), Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 171–4.

²² GB ², 1,4 (Trinity College, Cambridge Adv c 21 69), reworked into GB ³, I:1 (= vol. 1), 11. Among the repeated amendments the order of the corrections is difficult to disentangle. He obviously considered and rejected (at least once): “Tradition, at least of the learned in the time of Servius, that is about the end of the fourth (?) century … ”; “The general opinion of the ancients held that … ”; “The general opinion of the ancients, as reported by the old Virgilian commentator Servius, held that … ”; “According to the general opinion of the ancients.….” Earlier (on p. 4) he considered altering the first sentence of this paragraph from “I begin by setting forth the few facts and legends which have come down to us on the subject” to “facts and opinions,” though he later decided to leave the sentence as it stood in the second edition. For an impression of the character of Frazer's own marginal notes (sometimes submerging the written text), see Fraser, The Making of The Golden Bough (Plate 1, facing p. 196).

²³ GB ², VII: 1 (= vol. 10), vi (though note that the abridged edition of 1922 again claims that “the primary aim of this book is to explain the remarkable rule which regulated the succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia” (p. v). Smith (“When the Bough Breaks,” especially 209–12) documents this change of emphasis over the successive editions very clearly, as does Ackerman, J. G. Frazer (especially 236–57), though, in my view, occasionally over-interpreting its significance. See also n. 14.

²⁴ GB ³, I:1 (= vol. 1), 2, especially n. 1. Frazer's view that the Latin word nemus meant, in its strictest sense, a natural opening or glade, while lucus meant the wooded grove itself, is probably the reverse of the truth. Among relevant passages not cited by Frazer, note especially Cato, On Agriculture, 148. For recent discussion of sacred groves, see O. de Cazanove and J. Scheid, eds., Les bois sacrés (forthcoming).

²⁵ GB ³, I:1 (= vol. 1), 1–2. A similar claim is made in the preface to GB ³, IV: 1 (= vol. 5), v, again hardly developed. Frazer's edition of Pausanias' six-volume Description of Greece (London, 1898)Google ScholarPubMed contains a number of sometimes elegant, sometimes high-flown descriptions of landscapes; for an analysis of these scenic passages, see Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 137–9, and Fraser, The Making of The Golden Bough, 42–3. Significantly, however, Frazer's commentary devotes almost no attention to the Greek sacred groves described in Pausanias' text.

²⁶ See, especially, Smith, “When the Bough Breaks,” 221–34. Other critics have noted the crucial importance of the similarity between Balder and the priest-king of Nemi; see Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 95–110 and Fraser, The Making of The Golden Bough, 191. Early reviewers were struck (in different ways) by the link between the myth of Balder and that of the Golden Bough. So, for example, in the Glasgow Herald (June 4, 1890) the anonymous reviewer suggested that Frazer “does not succeed, unless by straining, in harmonising the act of plucking the bough with the act of striking Balder”; though reviewers in the Pall Mall Gazette (June 10, 1890) and The Academy (June 14, 1890, by Isaac Taylor) were convinced. Taylor even believed that that link was the strongest point in the book (The Academy, June 14, 1890).

²⁷ Smith, “When the Bough Breaks,” 238–9.

²⁸ Some 36,000 copies of each volume of the complete third edition were printed between 1911 and 1922; over 33,000 copies of the abridged edition were printed between 1922 and 1933 Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 257). For figures on earlier editions, see Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 96, 113, 114, 162, 177).

²⁹ This task is made infinitely easier because of Lady Frazer's often derided preoccupation with her husband's career. It appears that from at least the mid-1920s she organized a subscription to various news clipping agencies, with the result that an extraordinary range of press reports and reviews of Frazer's work from all over the world are preserved in scrap books in the Wren Library, Trinity College (amongst others Frazer MSS 7, 22^5–34, 22^35–56, 22^110–43, 22^144–65.It is unclear how far, or in what way, Frazer's public image in this last period of his life differed from his image in the earliest years of the century or the late Victorian period—for there is no full collection of clippings within the Frazer papers before the mid-1920s. It would, of course, be possible to conduct a full survey of the British and foreign press for that earlier period in search of references to Frazer; but it seemed to me that (however interesting the question of the changes in Frazer's reputation) the results were unlikely to justify the months of time for such a survey. My material therefore concentrates on the period covered by the cuttings already assembled in the Trinity College collection.

³⁰ See the Daily News, May 23, 1896 (coronations); The Times, July 14, 1937 (eating horsemeat); Cavalcade, March 15, 1941 (voodoo against Hitler). Similarly, the Melbourne Argus, June 12, 1936 (religious associations of volcanoes); the Manchester Evening News, December 23, 1939 (mistletoe); the Huddersfield Examiner, March 23, 1940 (Easter customs). The comprehensive index of the third edition (stretching to almost 400 pages) no doubt partly accounts for the frequency with which The Golden Bough is cited. This index effectively turned the work into an easy reference encyclopaedia of world customs.

³¹ See, for example, the Sydney Morning Herald, 02 13, 1936, reviewing Aftermath (London, 1936):Google Scholar “Sir James, a late Victorian, pities the poor savage with all his heart for being so ignorant of the blessings of civilisation. The young anthropologist of today usually envies the savage for exactly the same reason.”

³² Reported in the Saturday Review of Literature, New York, 12 28, 1940.Google Scholar

³³ April 16, 1938. Apparently Mrs. Roosevelt showed similar tastes, enjoying “treatises on sociology and history,” while her husband preferred “books of the sea.”

³⁴ The Cambeltown Courier, February 22, 1941. See also (for war-time reading) the Baptist Times, September 28, 1939 (“I shall keep Sir James Frazer's Golden Bough within easy reach”); the Auckland Star, August 24, 1940 (“Frazer's unabridged edition of The Golden Bough is guaranteed to keep the non-skipping reader fully occupied through another 40 years war”).

³⁵ The Birmingham Post, September 3, 1936. The meeting with Owens was apparently arranged by Dr. Harris Kirk, an American preacher.

³⁶ This included not only academic works (including Creation and Evolution in Primitive Cosmogonies [London, 1935];Google ScholarAnthologia Anthropologica, 1–4 [London, 1938–1939Google Scholar]—anthologies of material relating to “native races” of different areas) but also a children's book about a dog (written with Lady Frazer), Pasha the Pom (London, 1937).Google Scholar

³⁷ It is not entirely clear why Frazer (by this date completely blind) was so charmed by the fireworks! He is normally characterized by the press as uninterested in these gatherings, preferring the pleasure of a good day's work. See, for example, the New York Times, January 1, 1939; the Northern Echo, February 19, 1937.

³⁸ Haylett, Gerald, News Chronicle, 01 27, 1937,Google Scholar a rare signed piece.

³⁹ Published on April 15, 1936, by the Northern Daily Mail, West Lancashire Evening Gazette, Portsmouth Evening News, Dublin Evening Mail, Oldham Evening Chronicle, Staffordshire Sentinel, Nottingham Evening Post, North Western Evening Mail, Aberdeen Evening Express, South Wales Evening Post, Cambridge Daily News (very abbreviated), Yorkshire Evening News; on April 16, 1936, by the Torbay Herald; on April 18, 1936, by the Gloucester Journal. The account may also, of course, have been printed in other papers which did not reach the Frazers and so are not preserved in the collection at Trinity College.

⁴⁰ A vast bibliography (144 pages) is included in the final volume of GB3, with full details of all works cited. By the time Frazer was writing the third edition a number of the ethnographic accounts he relied upon were themselves influenced by his theories, well known from earlier editions. Frazer appears gratified by their confirmation, rather than alarmed by the circularity.

⁴¹ Dublin Evening Mail, September 25, 1936. Frazer himself was reported to be pleased “that the knowledge which they [his books] contain about the customs and ways of thought of primitive peoples may be of help to those whose task it is to govern them” (quoted in fuller versions of the report cited in n. 39).

⁴² Aspects of the complex relation of anthropology and imperialism are explored by Gillian Beer, “Speaking for the Others: Relativism and Authority in Victorian Anthropological Literature,” in Fraser, R., ed., Sir James Frazer and the Literary Imagination (London, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also the brief discussion with bibliography by Phillips, C. R. III, “Classical Scholarship Against its History,” American Journal of Philology, 111 (1989), 636–57 (especially 646–7).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴³ Note, for example, GB ³, I:1 (= vol. 1), 148–9, where the twelve footnotes embrace the customs of Java, North India, Mexico, the northern counties of Britain, Germany and the Slavs, as well as references to Mrs. Gamp and the Greek scientist, Aelian. Many other openings offer a similar range.

⁴⁴ See, for example, Fowler's, W. Warde review in Classical Review. 5 (1891), 48–52.Google Scholar See the subtitle of the first edition, “A Study in Comparative Religion,” and the first advertisements for the book (“The Method of Investigation Is the Comparative One” as in Athenaeum, March 2, 1890).

⁴⁵ For Harrison's intellectual background, see Ackerman, R., “Jane Ellen Harrison: The Early Work,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 13 (1972), 209–30,Google Scholar and Ackerman's doctoral thesis, The Cambridge Group and the Origins of Myth Criticism (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1969).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ The difference between Tylor's work and Frazer's partly consists in presentation and packaging (important factors in the popular reception of the work). It is striking to compare the flamboyance of Frazer's footnotes (see n. 41) with the reticence of Tylor's throughout Primitive Culture. Similarly Frazer's index in GB ³ parades the range of his comparative scheme (with a column of references to the traditions of Scotland, and even eleven references to the traditions of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire), while Tylor's tends to conceal that (with fewer than five references in the whole of the index of Primitive Culture to subjects obviously connected with British local traditions). The wide-ranging comparative framework underlying Tylor's work is made clear in, for example, “On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions; Applied to Laws of Marriage and Descent,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 18 (1889), 245–69Google Scholar (not an article for “the general reader”).

⁴⁷ The list of contents of various ethnographic and similar journals illustrate this clearly. Consider the range of articles in the Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (ns), 1 (1868–9)Google Scholar: from “On the Pseudo-Cromlech on Mount Alexander, Australia” and “On Some of the Mountain Tribes of the North West Frontier of India” to “Flint Instruments from Oxfordshire and the Isle of Thanet” and “On Chinese Charms.” Likewise articles in the Folk-Lore Record, 1(1878) included: “Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868,” “The Folk-Lore of France” (by Andrew Lang), “A Folk-Tale and Various Superstitions of the Hidatsa Indians” (by Tylor himself), “Divination by the Blade Bone,” and “Wart and Wen Cures.” Among the European periodicals, note, for example, Archivio per le tradizioni populari (from 1882), Memoires de la societe a”anthropologié d' Paris (from 1860), Revue des traditions populaires (from 1886).

⁴⁸ Warde Fowler appreciated this point in his review of GB ¹. In discussing the significance of Nemi for Frazer's work, he concludes that Frazer “has provided us with a thread which at once increases both our comfort and our curiosity” (p. 49).

⁴⁹ Sunday Chronicle, August 15, 1937. For headlines parading Frazer's ignorance of “savages in the flesh,” see the articles cited in n. 39.

⁵⁰ GB ³, I:1 (= vol. 1), 43; GB ³, VII:2 (= vol. 11), 308. This final image of sailing was introduced only in GB ³ (compare, GB ², 3, 462). Frazer's own copy of this volume of GB ² (Trinity College, Adv c 21 71) shows various attempts to elaborate these final sections. The image of travel in The Golden Bough is noted by Hymans, S. E., The Tangled Bank (New York, 1962), 264–5,Google Scholar though he does not investigate its significance.

⁵¹ Manchester Examiner, May 17, 1890; Athenaeum, August 2, 1890; Oxford Magazine. October 29, 1890.

⁵² This is discussed also by Gillian Beer, “Speaking for the Others.” One of the finest moments in the novel is when a talking parrot reveals to Felix his likely fate as a god-king.

⁵³ Wryly interpreted by the reviewer in the National Observer, November 29, 1890: “The conclusion you reach is that it is better to be Taboo (in the degenerate sense) at home than to be Taboo (in the original sense) and a god in a cannibal island.”

⁵⁴ Reminiscences ofa Student's Life (London, 1925), 82 (reprinted in Anon, 4(1965), 312–46Google Scholar at p. 343)).

⁵⁵ My certainty does not derive from any statistically accurate survey. It comes from relentless questioning of friends and colleagues in humanities Faculties in the Universities of Cambridge and London. If they have not read it, who has? A similar view is held by G. Steiner, who (in a recent [1990] radio broadcast) linked The Golden Bough with Capital and The Origin of Species as the great unread classics of non-fiction. For further discussion of the influence of un-read (or rather the “not-finished”) books, see Beer, G., “Ceasing to Read,” in Arguing with the Past: Essays in Narrative from Woolf to Sidney (London, 1989), especially 6–8.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ For discussion of the literary influence of The Golden Bough, see Vickery, J. B., The Literary Impact of the Golden Bough (Princeton, 1973) and Fraser, , ed.,Google ScholarSir James Frazer and the Literary Imagination. This literary influence of Frazer is often rated very highly; and some would argue no doubt that it is more important for the current popularity of The Golden Bough than the main lines of my argument might suggest. Maybe. But I sense that this literary aspect gives it a rather more tenuous hold on contemporary popular culture than many critics would like to suggest. To be sure, a diligent college student working on Eliot's Wasteland might feel some obligation at least to look at some passages of The Golden Bough. For most people the importance of Frazer for Eliot, Joyce, Yeats and Lawrence merely gives the book a vague sense of familiarity, rather than encouraging them to pick it up and read it.