James George Frazer was born on January 1, 1854, in Glasgow, Scotland. As he grew up he developed an interest in classical literature, which was his major when he enrolled in Glasgow University at age fifteen. After graduating Glasgow he received a scholarship to Trinity College at Cambridge, where he was given a teaching position in 1879. For the rest of his life, except for one unsatisfying year at Liverpool University in 1907, Frazer was associated with Trinity College.

In his early years at Trinity, Frazer formed a relationship with William Robertson Smith, who at that time was assembling the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Smith asked Frazer, who had recently become interested in the cultures and stories of primitive people, to write an article about totemism for the encyclopedia. Frazer was a dedicated writer, spending twelve and fourteen hours a day researching in the library; when his finished...