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Thomas Crofton Croker
(1798-1854)
Croker's first and most influential work, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, was published in 1825 and met with immediate success. The Brothers Grimm almost immediately translated it into German and began a correspondence with Croker. Sir Walter Scott communicated with Croker on the subject of folklore and later met him personally in London. Croker inspired Keightley to pursue his many of his own investigations into the field (in fact Keightley was one of Croker's sources for stories).
Lady Isabella Persse Gregory
Photo of Lady Gregory
John Francis Campbell
(1822-1885)
Photo of J. F.
Campbell
J. F. Campbell was a versatile man, writing on many subjects. Only during a few short years did he devote himself to folklore. He was one of the first folklorists to collect material in Scotland from the Gaelic-speaking peasantry, but his achievement lay not only in the collection of folk lore and legend, but also very much in his comparitive analysis of it. He supplied detailed information on the tales and on the tellers of the tales. His work, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, Orally Collected (4 volumes), was a pioneering force in Celtic folklore, and is still important today.
John Gregorson Campbell
Photo of J. G. Campbell
Joseph Jacobs (1854-1916)
Joseph Jacobs was born in Sydney, Australia in 1854. He was educated first at the university there, then later studied at Cambridge and then Berlin. He first achieved academic prominence for his histories of the Jewish peoples. He also wrote a novel on the life of Christ.
Jacob's folklore reputation was gained during his carreer as editor of Folk-Lore (between 1889 and 1900). Jacob's books of English and Celtic tales were well-received by the general public, but were somewhat criticized for their polished nature. Jacobs took tales from folklore and extensively revised and polished them, for moral and other reasons. However, he noted his changes in the appendices of his books, which also contained histories and comparitive critiques of the folklore. It is these richly detailed notes that most folklorists are today interested in.
Thomas Keightley (1789-1872)
Andrew Lang
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John Rhys (1840-1916)
Photo of John Rhys
John Rhys was one of foremost authorities of Celtic folklore, and especially Welsh folklore, during the nineteenth century. He became the first professor of Celtic at Oxford university, which was established from the Celtic Revival movement of Matthew Arnold. His most famous work, Celtic Folklore, Welsh and Manx, was published in 1901, and was the result of 30 years of work in the field. Unfortunately, it was not well received. It was criticized for lack of focus and over-inclusiveness.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Much of Lady Wilde's material came from the researches of her husband, Dr. William Wilde. Her famous work, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland was published in two volumes in 1887. It was criticized by other folklorists by its failure to identify the sources of tales or which part of the country specific tales came from. Another criticism is that she did not speak Gaelic herself, and used a translator to collect many tales. Others, however, found Lady Wilde's writing beautiful and poetic, including W. B. Yeats, who considered it one of the best collections of Irish folklore published.
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Sylvia Townsend Warner(1893-1978)
Sylvia Townsend Warner was born in 1893 in Harrow. She was an early student of music, and was quite interested in the music of the 15th and 16th centuries. Ten years were spent as an editor on a ten-volume work on Tudor religious music. Her first book of poetry was published in 1925, and her first novel in 1926, with which she gained critical recognition. It was also during this time that she first published stories for the New Yorker, which continued for 40 years. Her stories concerning the Elfin peoples of Europe were first printed in the New Yorker, and finally collected and published in the book Kingdoms of Elfin in 1977. Her critical recognition came from her other novels and biographies, however.Source: Selected Stories, front page biographical notes.
Ida Rentoul Outhwaite (1888-1960)
Ida Rentoul was born in 1888, in Melbourne. She showed talent from an early age, but her father refused to give her any formal artistic training for fear it would ruin her natural talents. When she was fifteen, several of her fairy drawings were published in The New Idea. Her first book, titled Mollie's Bunyip, was published when she was sixteen. At age 21 she maried Grenbry Outhwaite. Her best known work was Elves and Fairies, published in 1916 in a limited run of 800 copies. This work contained many watercolours, along with verse written by her sister Annie. Ten years later she published a companion book called Fairyland, in a limited run of 1000 copies. She died in 1960.Source: The Little World of Elves and Fairies, preface. This work contains selections of her illustrations from her the two books mentioned above, but is minus the verse by her sister.