The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion was first published by Macmillan in 1890 in two volumes. The second edition (1900) expanded to three volumes; the third edition (1906–1915) ballooned to twelve volumes. A one-volume abridgement appeared in 1922 and became one of the most widely read works of anthropology in the English language.
The book begins with a question: why did the priest of the sacred grove at Nemi (near Rome) hold his position only so long as he could defend it against a challenger who first had to pluck a “golden bough” from a sacred tree? Frazer’s answer requires thousands of pages because it involves nothing less than a comprehensive theory of how human thought has evolved from magical thinking (the belief that ritual can control nature) through religious thinking (the belief that gods control nature) to scientific thinking (the understanding of natural law).
Along the way, Frazer assembles an encyclopedic catalogue of myths, rituals, and customs from cultures worldwide: the killing of the divine king, the corn spirit, the scapegoat, vegetation myths, dying and rising gods, taboos, fire festivals, and the sacred marriage. His comparative method — placing superficially different customs side by side to reveal their underlying structural identity — was revolutionary, though his assumption that all cultures develop along the same evolutionary trajectory is now considered ethnocentric.
The book’s influence extended far beyond anthropology. T.S. Eliot drew on it for The Waste Land; James Joyce used it in Ulysses; William Butler Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, Robert Graves, and Joseph Campbell all absorbed its vision of myth as a universal language underlying all human culture. As science, The Golden Bough is outdated; as literature and as cultural influence, it remains indispensable.
Collecting The Golden Bough
First edition (Macmillan, London, 1890): Two volumes, green cloth.
Market values:
- First edition (2 vols, 1890): $2,000–$6,000
- Third edition complete (12 vols, 1906–15): $1,000–$3,000
- Abridged one-volume edition (1922): $50–$150
- Later abridged editions: $10–$30