Volume 4, Number 3 · March 11, 1965
A Classic of Anthropology
By Edmund R. Leach
Ancient Society
by Lewis Morgan, edited by Leslie A. White
Harvard, 596 pp., $9.95
In this beautifully printed and superbly edited book one of the great classics of anthropological literature is for the first time given the kind of presentation it deserves. Its previous publication history is curious. In 1877 the author thought of it as no more than a 'summary and conclusions' to the vast documentation of his Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, issued in 1870 under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. Ancient Society received favorable reviews from scholarly critics in America, but comment in England was rather cool, no doubt because the book included an appendix directly attacking the views of the respected English anthropologist, J. F. McLennan. Sales were slow, but among its early readers was Karl Marx, who resided at that time in London. Marx considered that Morgan's speculations provided independent evidence for his own theories of social evolution and he made copious notes for a digest of Morgan's work. These notes were posthumously worked up by Engels in The Origin of the Family, first published in German in Zurich (1884).
Review, 2154 words
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