Frazer, a Cambridge researcher trained in classical literature, outlines ancient myths and folk legends, proposing that all civilizations go through three stages of development: belief in magic leads to organized religion, which eventually leads to faith in the powers of science. Readers who desire to ascertain the source of any particular statement must therefore consult the larger work, which is fully documented and provided with a complete bibliography.Ever since its first edition in 1890, The Golden Bough has been considered a major influence in the development of western thought. In order to keep as much of the text as possible I have sacrificed all the notes, and with them all exact references to my authorities. The language of the original has also for the most part been preserved, though here and there the exposition has been somewhat condensed. While the bulk of the book has been greatly reduced, I have endeavoured to retain its leading principles, together with an amount of evidence sufficient to illustrate them clearly. This abridgment is an attempt to meet the wish and thereby to bring the work within the range of a wider circle of readers. Meantime a wish has often been expressed that the book should be issued in a more compendious form.

In successive editions the discussion of these and kindred topics has occupied more and more space, the enquiry has branched out in more and more directions, until the two volumes of the original work have expanded into twelve. When I first set myself to solve the problem more than thirty years ago, I thought that the solution could be propounded very briefly, but I soon found that to render it probable or even intelligible it was necessary to discuss certain more general questions, some of which had hardly been broached before. THE PRIMARY aim of this book is to explain the remarkable rule which regulated the succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia.

The Golden Bough was first published in two volumes in 1890 in three volumes in 1900 and in twelve volumes in the third edition, published 1906-15. The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (retitled The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion in its second edition) is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by Sir James George Frazer.

The Golden Bough by James George Frazer