The Folklore Society


The Folklore Society is a registered charity under English law based in London, England for the study of folklore. Its office is at 50 Fitzroy Street, London home of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
It was founded in London in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts and crafts, customs and belief. The foundation was prompted by a suggestion made by Eliza Gutch in the pages of Notes and Queries.
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Members

William Thoms, the editor of Notes and Queries who had first introduced the term folk-lore, seems to have been instrumental in the formation of the society: as was G. L. Gomme, who was for many years a leading member.
Some prominent members were identified as the "great team" in Richard Dorson's now long-outdated 1967 history of British folkloristics, late-Victorian leaders of the surge of intellectual interest in the field, these were Andrew Lang, Edwin Sidney Hartland, Alfred Nutt, William Alexander Clouston, Edward Clodd, and Gomme. Later historians have taken a deeper interest in the pre-modern views of members such as Joseph Jacobs.
A long-serving member and steady contributor to the society's discourse and publications was Charlotte Sophia Burne, the first woman to become editor of its journal and later president of the society. Ethel Rudkin, the Lincolnshire folklorist, was a notable member; her publications included several articles in the journal, as well as the book Lincolshire Folklore. Classicist Katherine Raleigh was also a member.

Publications

The society publishes, in partnership with Taylor and Francis, the journal Folklore in four issues per year, and, since 1986, a newsletter, FLS News.
The journal began as The Folk-Lore Record in 1878, continued or was restarted as The Folk-Lore Journal, and from 1890 its issues were compiled as volumes with the long title Folk-Lore: A Quarterly Review of Myth, Tradition, Institution, & Custom. Incorporating The Archæological Review and The Folk-Lore Journal. Joseph Jacobs edited the first four annual volumes as the Quarterly Review, succeeded by Alfred Nutt. As the head of publisher David Nutt in the Strand, Alfred Nutt was the publisher of the journal from 1890.
Charlotte Burne edited the journal between 1899 and 1908. The editorship then passed to A. R. Wright ; William Crooke ; A. R. Wright ; E. O. James ; Christina Hole ; Jacqueline Simpson ; Gillian Bennett, Patricia Lysaght and Jessica Hemming.

Collections

The Folklore Society Library has around 15,000 books and more than 200 serial titles and is held at University College London Library and Special Collections. Its major strengths are in folk narrative and English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh folklore; there are also substantial holdings of east European folklore books, and long runs of Estonian and Basque folklore serials.
The Folklore Society Archives and Collections include folklore-related papers of G. L. Gomme and Lady Gomme, T. F. Ordish, William Crooke, Henry Underhill, Estella Canziani, Denis Galloway, Barbara Aitken, Margaret Murray, Katharine Briggs and others. The society's archives and collections are held at University College London's Special Collections.

Presidents

Katharine Briggs Award

The Katharine Briggs Award is an annual book prize awarded by the Society in honour of Katharine Mary Briggs. The prize has been awarded every year since it was first announced in 1982. Notable winners include Israeli historian of social memory Guy Beiner, American scholar of fairy tales Jack Zipes, English mythographer Marina Warner, British radical historian E. P. Thompson, English married team of folklorists Iona and Peter Opie and Soviet folklorist Vladimir Propp.
Winners of the award are:
  • 1982: Samuel Pyeatt Menefee, Wives for Sale: an Ethnographic Study of British Popular Divorce
  • 1983: Michael Pickering, Village Song and Culture
  • 1984: Sandra Billington, A Social History of the Fool
  • 1985: Vladimir Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, edited by Anatoly Liberman
  • 1986: Iona and Peter Opie, The Singing Game
  • 1987: Amy Shuman, Storytelling Rights
  • 1988: Hilda Ellis Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe
  • 1989: J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans Language, Archaeology and Myth
  • 1990: Paul Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning
  • 1991: Simon Charsley, Rites of Marrying: The Wedding Industry in Scotland
  • 1992: E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common
  • 1993: Georgina Boyes, The Imagined Village: Culture, Ideology, and the English Folk Revival
  • 1994: Claudia Kinmonth, Irish Country Furniture 1700-1950
  • 1995: Timothy Mitchell, Flamenco Deep Song
  • 1996: Mary-Ann Constantine, Breton Ballads
  • 1997: Neil Jarman, Parading Culture: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland
  • 1998: Joseph Falaky Nagy, Conversing with Angels and Ancients: The Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland
  • 1999: Marina Warner, No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock
  • 2000: Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity
  • 2001: Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500-1700
  • 2002: Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey, Death, Memory and Material Culture
  • 2003: Malcolm Jones, The Secret Middle Ages
  • 2004: Steve Roud, The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland
  • 2005: Jeremy Harte, Explore Fairy Traditions
  • 2006: Catherine Rider, Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages
  • 2007: Jack Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick
  • 2008: Richard Bebb, Welsh Furniture 1250-1950: a Cultural History of Craftsmanship and Design
  • 2009: Kathryn Marsh, The Musical Playground: Global Tradition and Change in Children's Songs and Games
  • 2010: Arthur Taylor, Played at the Pub: the Pub Games of Britain
  • 2011: Herbert Halpert, edited by John Widdowson, Folk Tales, Trickster Tales and Legends of the Supernatural from the Pinelands of New Jersey
  • 2012: David Hopkin, Voices of the People in Nineteenth-Century France
  • 2013: Karl Bell, The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures
  • 2014: David Atkinson, The Anglo-Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts
  • 2015: Richard Jenkins, Black Magic and Bogeymen
  • 2016: Lizanne Henderson, Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment: Scotland, 1670-1740
  • 2017: Christopher Josiffe, Gef! The Strange Tale of an Extra-Special Talking Mongoose
  • 2018: Martin Graebe, As I Walked Out: Sabine Baring Gould and the Search for the Folk Songs of Devon and Cornwall
  • 2019: Guy Beiner, Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster
  • 2020: William G. Pooley, Body and Tradition in Nineteenth-Century France: Félix Arnaudin and the Moorlands of Gascony, 1870-1914
  • 2021: Jonathan Y. H. Hui, Vilmundar saga viðutan. The Saga of Vilmundur the Outsider
  • 2022: Marina Montesano Folklore, Magic, and Witchcraft: Cultural Exchanges from the Twelfth to Eighteenth Century
  • 2023: Una McIlvenna, Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900
  • 2024: Tabitha Stanmore, Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic.
  • 2025: Ann Schmiesing, ''The Brothers Grimm: A Biography''

Coote Lake Medal

The Coote Lake medal is awarded by the Committee of the Folklore Society for "outstanding research and scholarship" in the field of Folklore Studies.
The award is named in honour of Harold Coote Lake, an active member of the Folklore Society in the 1920s and 1930s.
The recipients have been: