Francis James Child

Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of English and Scottish ballads now known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry. In 1876 he was named Harvard's first Professor of English, a position which allowed him to focus on academic research. It was during this time that he began work on the Child Ballads.

Francis James Child

(1825-02-01)February 1, 1825

Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

July 11, 1896(1896-07-11) (aged 71)

Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

"Sedgwick Pie", Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Harvard University

English professor, folklorist

Child Ballads

Elizabeth Ellery Sedgwick

The Child Ballads were published in five volumes between 1882 and 1898. While Child was primarily a literary scholar with little interest in the music of the ballads, his work became a major contribution to the study of English-language folk music.^[1]

Il Pesceballo

, ed. (1911). "Child, Francis James" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 135.

Chisholm, Hugh

Atkinson, David (2001-01-01). . Journal of American Folklore. 114 (453): 370–380. doi:10.2307/542028. ISSN 0021-8715. JSTOR 542028. S2CID 201746574.

"The English Revival Canon: Child Ballads and the Invention of Tradition"

Atkinson, David (2022-02-23). . Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-0634-5. OCLC 48857851.

The English traditional ballad : theory, method, and practice

Brown, Mary Ellen (2011). . Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03594-4. OCLC 643324042.

Child's unfinished masterpiece : the English and Scottish popular ballads

Brown, Mary Ellen (2006). . Journal of Folklore Research. 43 (2): 89–108. doi:10.2979/JFR.2006.43.2.89. ISSN 0737-7037. JSTOR 3814868. S2CID 161954760.

"Child's Gallant Army of Auxiliaries"

Cheesman, Tom; Rieuwerts, Sigrid, eds. (1999). (2nd ed.). Bern: Peter Lang. ISBN 3-906761-67-3. OCLC 41792112.

Ballads into books : the legacies of Francis James Child. Selected Papers from the 26th International Ballad Conference (SIEF Ballad Commission), Swansea, Wales, 19–24 July 1996

(1987). Professing literature : an institutional history. Chicago. ISBN 0-226-30603-8. OCLC 13795373.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Graff, Gerald

Rieuwerts, Sigrid (1994). . Journal of Folklore Research. 31 (1–3): 1–34. ISSN 0737-7037. JSTOR 3814508.

""The Genuine Ballads of the People": F. J. Child and the Ballad Cause"

Rudy, Jill Terry (1998). . Journal of Folklore Research. 35 (2): 85–98. ISSN 0737-7037. JSTOR 3814750.

"Considering Rhetoric's Wayward Child: Ballad Scholarship and Intradisciplinary Conflict"

Rudy, Jill Terry (2004). . College English. 66 (5): 524–544. doi:10.2307/4140733. ISSN 0010-0994. JSTOR 4140733.

"Transforming Audiences for Oral Tradition: Child, Kittredge, Thompson, and Connections of Folklore and English Studies"

(2002) [1999]. The liberal education of Charles Eliot Norton. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6147-0. OCLC 40668163.

Turner, James

at Project Gutenberg

Works by Francis James Child

at Internet Archive

Works by or about Francis James Child

at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Works by Francis James Child

Biography of Francis James Child at The Contemplator

Burgess, John. "Francis James Child: Brief Life of a Victorian Enthusiast: 1825-1896". Harvard Magazine, May-June, 2006.

Olson, Ian. Review of Mark and Laura Heiman's Corrected Second Edition of Francis James Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, volume 1, in Musical Traditions internet magazine, May 14, 2002.

"Francis James Child" entry 43 in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). Volume XVIII. Later National Literature, Part III, XXV. Scholars, no. 43. "Francis James Child".

free e-texts of The English and Scottish Ballads are available in several formats: Volume 1; Volume 2; Volume 3; Volume 4. [Other volumes in preparation.]

Francis James Child