James G. Frazer's Correspondence With John Roscoe, 1907-1924

The Frazer collection at Trinity College Library, Cambridge, contains over 140 letters which Frazer wrote to the missionary anthropologist John Roscoe. Roscoe was with the CMS in Buganda from 1881 to 1909, and it was Frazer who first interested him in ethnographic work and guided his research. This led to the publication of The Baganda in 1911, the first, full-scale ethnography of an African society and an anthropological classic. Frazer's letters chronicle the close personal and professional relationship between the two men and shed considerable light on Roscoe's ethnographic work. It was Frazer who arranged for Roscoe to embark on the Mackie Expedition to Central Africa (Uganda) in 1919-1920, which resulted in the publication of The Soul of Africa (1922), The Bakitara or Banyoro (1923), The Banyankole (1923), and The Bageshu and Other Tribes of the Uganda Protectorate (1924). The collection also contains twelve letters from Roscoe. The correspondence indicates how highly Frazer valued Roscoe's ethnography and how important it was to Frazer's own work, especially to his theory of divine kingship as developed in The Golden Bough. Frazer corresponded with scholars, missionaries, colonial officials, and anthropologists around the world, and the collection may contain letters to other persons of interest to historians of Africa. The Frazer collection is open to scholarly researchers, and the Manuscript Cataloguer, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, CB21TQ, is most helpful in answering written inquiries.