James G. Frazer

(1854 - 1941)

An anthropologist and a historian of religion, James G. Frazer was born in preindustrial Glasgow, the son of a successful pharmacist. He entered the University of Glasgow at age fifteen and matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1874 for a second baccalaureate. Influential in the development of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion, Frazer wrote to the publisher George Macmillan in 1889 offering him a manuscript on magic, folklore, and religion in the ancient world. The result was the book he is best known for, The Golden Bough, originally published in two volumes in 1890.