The golden bough (1890)

Sir James George Frazer's The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a broad comparative study of mythology and religion. Treating religion as a cultural phenomenon rather than discussing it from a theological perspective, the effect of The Golden Bough on both European literature and the emerging discipline of anthropology was substantial. The pioneering anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski said of it: "No sooner had I read this great work than I became immersed in it and enslaved by it. I realized then that anthropology, as presented by Sir James Frazer, is a great science, worthy of as much devotion as any of her elder and more exact studies and I became bound to the service of Frazerian anthropology."