British anthropologist, born at Glasgow on the 1st of January 1854. Educated at Helensburgh, Glasgow University and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was elected fellow of his college in 1879 and was called to the bar. In 1907 he was elected professor of social anthropology at Liverpool. His principal work, The Golden Bough, first published in 1890 (2nd ed., 1900) and reissued with enlargements in 12 vols. under seven titles between 1907 and 1915, was an elaborate study of the Greek cults, their origins and their place in the comparative history of religion. He also published Pausanias and other Greek sketches (1900) and Sir Roger de Coverley and other literary pieces (1920).
