The Folklore Society was founded in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts and crafts, customs and belief. The foundation was prompted by a suggestion made by Eliza Gutch

Eliza Gutch

Eliza Gutch was an author and contributor to Notes and Queries. It was from her suggestion that the Folklore Society was formed, with Gutch as a founder member...

 in the pages of Notes and Queries

Notes and Queries

Notes and Queries is a long-running quarterly scholarly journal that publishes short articles related to "English language and literature, lexicography, history, and scholarly antiquarianism". Its emphasis is on "the factual rather than the speculative"...

.

Members

William Thoms

William Thoms

William John Thoms was a British writer credited with coining the term "folklore" in the 1840s. Thoms's investigation of folklore and myth led to a later career of debunking longevity myths...

, the editor of Notes and Queries who had first introduced the term 'folk-lore', seems to have been instrumental in the formation of the society, and, along with G. L. Gomme, was for many years a leading member.

Some prominent members were identified as the "great team" in Richard Dorson

Richard Dorson

Richard Mercer Dorson was an American folklorist, author, professor, and director of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University.Dorson was born in New York City. He studied at the Phillips Exeter Academy from 1929 to 1933....

's now long outdated 1967 history of British folklore, late-Victorian leaders of the surge of intellectual interest in the field, these were Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...

, Edwin Sidney Hartland

Edwin Sidney Hartland

Edwin Sidney Hartland was an author of works on folklore.His works include anthologies of tales, and theories on anthropology and mythology with an ethnological perspective. He believed that the assembling and study of persistent and widespread folklore provided a scientific insight into custom...

, A. Nutt, William Alexander Clouston

William Alexander Clouston

William Alexander Clouston of Orkney was a 19th century British folklorist.A Supplement to Alliborne's Dictionary , as quoted in Folklore, gives the following biographical information:b...

, Edward Clodd

Edward Clodd

Edward Clodd was an English banker, writer and anthropologist. He cultivated a very wide circle of literary and scientific friends, who periodically met at Whitsun gatherings at his home at Aldeburgh, Suffolk....

 and Gomme. Later historians have taken a deeper interest in the pre-modern views of members such as Joseph Jacobs

Joseph Jacobs

Joseph Jacobs was a folklorist, literary critic and historian. His works included contributions to the Jewish Encyclopaedia, translations of European works, and critical editions of early English literature...

.
A long-serving member and steady contributor to the society's discourse and publications was Charlotte Sophia Burne

Charlotte Sophia Burne

Charlotte Sophia Burne was an author and editor, and the first woman to become president of the Folklore Society.Burne works include the large collection, Shropshire Folklore, and preparation of the second edition of the society's official Handbook of Folklore, she also contributed over seventy...

, the first woman to become editor of its journal and later president (1909-10) of the Society.

Publications

The society publishes, in partnership with Taylor and Francis, the journal Folklore in three issues per year, and since 1986 a newsletter, FLS News.

The Folklore Society Library has around 15,000 books and over 200 serial titles (40 currently received) and is held at University College London Library. Its major strengths are in folk narrative and British and Irish folklore; there are also substantial holdings of east European folklore books, and among the gems hard to find elsewhere are long runs of Estonian and Basque folklore serials.
The Folklore Society Archives and Collections include folklore-related papers of G.L.Gomme and Lady Gomme, T.F.Ordish, William Crooke, Henry Underhill, Estella Canziani, George Galloway, Barbara Aitken, Margaret Murray, Katharine Briggs and others. The Society's archives and collections are held at University College London's Special Collections.

The Folklore Society office is at The Warburg Institute, where it keeps a small collection of reference books and essential finding aids, including the card catalogue of all FLS library accessions up to 1993 (all FLS accessions after 1993 have been added to University College London Library's online catalogue http://library.ucl.ac.uk
Contact The Folklore Society Librarian via the society's website www.folklore-society.com for more information.

The journal began as the Folk-Lore Record in 1878, renamed Folk-Lore Journal, and from 1890 its issues were compiled as volumes entitled "Folk-Lore; A Quarterly Review of Myth, Tradition, Institution, & Custom. Incorporating 'The Archæological Review' and 'The Folk-Lore Journal'".

External links

• folklore-society.com the Folklore Society's Home Page