The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren

Iona (born 1923) and Peter Opie (1918-1982) began their research together in 1944. Fifteen years later, they published The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren and took their places as, to quote The Guardian, "the supreme archivists of the folklore movement." Since that time, they have jointly published The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, The Classic Fairy Tales, and Children's Game in Street and Playground. Since Peter Opie's death in 1982, Iona Opie has carried on with their work under his name as well as her own. »

Marina Warner is a writer of fiction, criticism, and history. Her award-winning studies of mythology and fairy tales include Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, From the Beast to the Blonde, and No Go the Bogeyman. In 2006 she published Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media, a study of ghosts, phantasms, and technology. Her most recent work of fiction is the novel The Leto Bundle. A Fellow of the British Academy, she is also Professor of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex. »

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren

By Iona and Peter Opie
Introduction by Marina Warner

First published in 1959, Iona and Peter Opie's The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren is a pathbreaking work of scholarship that is also a splendid and enduring work of literature. Going outside the nursery, with its assortment of parent-approved entertainments, to observe and investigate the day-to-day creative intelligence and activities of children, the Opies bring to life the rites and rhymes, jokes and jeers, laws, games, and secret spells of what has been called "the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which shows no signs of dying out."

Read the introduction (PDF)

Reviews

It is the sort of book one can brood over with continually renewed nostalgia, amusement, and wonder.
— Richard Hoggart

As well as being a valuable social study, it is one of the most exhilarating anthologies of our day.
— The Times Literary Supplement

Format: Paperback
Retail Price: $18.95
Price: $14.21 (25% off)

Aug 31, 2000
488 pages
ISBN: 0940322692
9780940322691
NYRB Classics
Essays & Criticism
History

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