Thomas Keightley
Thomas Keightley (17 October 1789 – 4 November 1872) was an Irish writer known for his works on mythology and folklore, particularly Fairy Mythology (1828), later reprinted as The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves, and Other Little People (1978, 2000, etc.).
This article is about the folklore author. For other uses, see Thomas Keightley (disambiguation).
Thomas Keightley
Thomas Keightley
17 October 1789
Dublin, Ireland
4 November 1872 (aged 83)[1]
Belvedere, London (Lesness Heath, Kent), England
Erith Churchyard
writer, folklorist, mythographer, historian
British / Irish
Fairy Mythology
Keightley was as an important pioneer in the study of folklore by modern scholars in the field. He was a "comparativist" folklore collector, drawing parallels between tales and traditions across cultures. A circumspect scholar, he did not automatically assume similar tales indicated transmission, allowing for the possibility that similar tales arose independently.
At the request of the educator Thomas Arnold, he authored a series of textbooks on English, Greek, and other histories, which were adopted at Arnold's Rugby School as well as other public schools.
Life and travels[edit]
Keightley, born in October 1789, was the son of Thomas Keightley of Newtown, County Kildare, and claimed to be related to Thomas Keightley (1650?–1719). He entered Trinity College, Dublin, on 4 July 1803, but left without a degree, and due to poor health he was forced to abandon the pursuit of the legal profession and admission to the Irish Bar.[2]
In 1824 he settled in London, and engaged in literary and journalistic work.[2] Keightley is known to have contributed tales to Thomas Crofton Croker's Fairy Legends of South Ireland (1825), though not properly acknowledged.[3] It turned out that he submitted at least one tale ("The Soul Cages") almost entirely of his own fabrication unbeknown to Croker and others.
Having spent time in Italy,[4] he was capable of producing translations of tales from Pentamerone or The Nights of Straparola in Fairy Mythology, and he struck up a friendship with the patriarch of the Rossetti household. Thomas claimed to be literate in twenty-odd languages and dialects in all,[5] and published a number of translations and digests of medieval and foreign works and passages, often sparsely treated elsewhere in the English language, including the expanded prose versions of Ogier the Dane which conveys the hero to Morgan le Fay's Fairyland, or Swedish ballads on nixes and elves, such as Harpans kraft ("Power of the Harp") and Herr Olof och älvorna ("Sir Olof in Elve-Dance").[6]
Historical works[edit]
Keightley was long occupied in compiling historical manuals for instructional use and popular enlightenment. His Outlines of History was one of the early volumes of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia (1829). His History of the War of Greek Independence (1830) forms volumes lx. and lxi. of Constable's Miscellany.[2]
After the Outlines, Keightley was urged by the educator Thomas Arnold of Rugby School to undertake work on a series of mid-sized histories to be used in schools.[25][15] History of England (1837–39), 2 vols., although based on John Lingard, was intended to counteract that writer's Catholic tendencies.[2] Other textbooks followed: History of Greece (1835); Rome (1836); Roman Empire (1840); India in (1846–7). His History of Greece was translated into modern Greek.[25] Keightley also compiled as a study tool Questions on Keightley's History of Greece and Rome (1836), and one on English history (1840) consisted of a long list of history quizzes organized by chapter, for young students of his Roman, Greek, and histories.
Keightley stated he sought to create history material for the schoolroom which were an improvement on Oliver Goldsmith's History, thought himself equal to the task, and found his proof when his titles were "adopt(ed).. immediately on their appearance" by "Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, and most of the other great public schools, besides a number of private ones."[26] In 1850, Keightley wrote immodestly of his historical output as "yet unrivalled, and may long be unsurpassed."[15] Keightley's History of Rome[27] was derivative of the labors of the German classical historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr, and Keightley's patron or mentor Arnold was a subscriber of Niebuhr's approach.[28]
Samuel Warren, in his Legal Studies, 3rd ed. 1854 (i. 235–6, 349), highly praises his historical work. But he ludicrously overestimated all his performances, and his claim to have written the best history of Rome in any language, or to be the first to justly value Virgil and Sallust, could not be admitted by his friends. During the last years of his life he received a pension from the civil list. He died at Erith, Kent, on Nov 4, 1872.[2]
Besides the works already mentioned Keightley was author of The Crusaders, or Scenes, Events, and Characters from the times of the Crusaders (1834). His Secret Societies of the Middle Ages (Library of Entertaining Knowledge 1837) was initially published anonymously, and against his wish,[29][30] and later reprinted in 1848.
Friends and family[edit]
Keightley, a friend to Gabriele Rossetti, and firm supporter of the latter's views on Dante became one of a handful of non-Italians who socialized with the family in the childhood days of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his siblings. Keightley's Fairy Mythology was one of the books Dante Gabriel pored over until age ten.
William Michael Rossetti's Memoir notes that Keightley had as "his nephew and adopted son, Mr. Alfred Chaworth Lyster" who became a dear friend.[39] A pen and ink likeness of this nephew by Dante Gabriel Rossetti exists, dated 1855.[40][41][f] Writings from the Rossetti family provide some other loose information on Keightley's related kin or on his later private life. A record by William Rossetti of a spiritual séance at Keightley's home at Belvedere on 4 January 1866, amusing in its own right, identifies "two Misses Keightley" in attendance, a kinsman named "William Samuel Keightley" who died in 1856 supposed to have made his spiritual presence in the session.[43] It has also been remarked that by this period, Keightley had become as "stone-deaf" as Seymour Kirkup, a person who was corresponding with Keightley on matters of spiritualism and visions.[44]