The Golden Bough

First issued in 1890 and later much enlarged, this comparative study of myth and ritual begins with the priest-king of the grove at Nemi, who must be killed by his successor, and widens into a survey of magic, taboo, dying gods, and seasonal festivals across many cultures. Frazer groups customs of kingship, fertility, scapegoats, and the death and return of vegetation deities, arguing that magic precedes religion and that both precede science. Classical, biblical, and ethnographic examples sit side by side. The book is a speculative anthropology of belief, not a field monograph on one people and not a retelling of a single myth.

Bound in printed and design blocked black cloth. Design blocked dark yellow slipcase.