Victorian folklore and folk magic
Frederick Thomas Elworthy
1830 – 1907
Frederick Thomas Elworthy was an English philologist and antiquarian based in Wellington, Somerset, whose landmark study The Evil Eye (1895) drew on extensive travel and collection to provide the most comprehensive Victorian survey of apotropaic magic, amulets, and the belief in the evil eye across Mediterranean and European cultures. He assembled one of the finest collections of protective charms and amulets in existence, bequeathed to the Somersetshire Archaeological Society. His rigorous ethnographic approach to protective folk magic made The Evil Eye a standard reference for scholars of amulet tradition and popular occult practice.
Archive Paths
Folk Magic
Folk magic texts and practical traditions covering charms, cures, household rites, prayers, talismans, and vernacular magical practice.
Comparative Mythology
Comparative mythology texts on gods, hero cycles, symbolic patterns, classical myth, Indo-European myth, and cross-cultural mythic structures.
Folklore Studies
Folklore studies texts on folk tales, fairy belief, superstition, regional customs, oral tradition, and the collection of vernacular belief.
Anthropology of Religion
Anthropological texts on ritual, animism, totemism, taboo, early religion, culture, and theories of belief formation.
Works in the Archive1 volume
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