Volume 12 of the definitive third edition of Frazer's classic work of social anthropology. With an autograph letter signed by the author and dated 19 February 1921 pasted onto the front free endpaper, in which Frazer kindly submits to a reader's request, "I have pleasure in enclosing six dated signatures and hope that they will answer your purpose". First published as a two-volume work in 1890 the Golden Bough was expanded to 12 volumes in the third edition (a supplementary thirteenth volume, entitled Aftermath, was published in 1936). "Frazer's true subject is nothing less than humanity's long upward struggle towards an understanding of itself and the world. In Frazer's view that movement towards the light began in earliest times with the priest–king employing magic to compel the gods to do his bidding, followed by a religious stage in which humans admit their powerlessness and now beseech rather than command the gods. Thus for Frazer religion is a necessary stage in mental evolution, but one that is based on mistaken premisses; it has now in turn been superseded by a world-view based on rationality: positive science. In focusing on the pattern of the dying and reviving god that lay at the heart of the religions of the ancient Mediterranean, while never mentioning Christianity, Frazer was more than a little disingenuous. In truth he was engaged all the while in a covert campaign against religion in general and Christianity in particular and may perhaps be seen, along with H. G. Wells, as the most important exponent of secularism in the twentieth century" (ODNB). Scarce thus.
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