Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (March 28, 1793 – December 10, 1864) was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi River. He is also noted for his major six-volume study of American Indians in the 1850s. He served as a United States Indian agent for a period beginning in 1822 in Michigan, where he married Jane Johnston, mixed-race daughter of a prominent Scotch-Irish fur trader and Ojibwa mother, herself a daughter of Ojibwa war chief Waubojeeg. She taught him the Ojibwe language and much about her maternal culture. They had several children, two of whom survived past childhood. She is now recognized as the first Native American literary writer in the United States. In 1846 the widower Schoolcraft was commissioned by Congress for a major study, known as Indian Tribes of the United States, which was published in six volumes from 1851 to 1857. He married again in 1847, to Mary Howard, from a slaveholding family in South Carolina. In 1860 she published the bestselling The Black Gauntlet, an anti-Uncle Tom's Cabin novel.

Chauncey Hugh Stigand (1877–1919) was a British army officer, colonial administrator and big game hunter. He was killed in action while attempting to suppress a rebellion of Aliab Dinka. Stigand was the son of William Stigand and Agnes Catherine Senior. His father was British vice-consul at Boulogne-sur-Mer when he was born there in 1877. He was educated at Radley and gazetted to the Royal West Kent Regiment in 1899. He served with them in Burma and British Somaliland, and then from 1901 in British East Africa with the King's African Rifles. He entered the Egyptian army in 1910 and was posted to the Upper White Nile, assuming control of the Lado Enclave from the Belgians in accordance with an agreement. He was placed in charge of the Kajo Kaji district. In 1915 Stigand was promoted to major. In 1916 he served in the campaign against 'Ali Dinar in Darfur. From 1917 to 1918 he was governor of the Upper Nile province. Stigand was appointed governor of Mongalla Province in 1919. He was killed by tribesmen of the Aliyab Dinka at Pap, between the Lau River and the White Nile. He married in 1913 Nancy Yulee Neff of Washington, D.C., and had one child, Florida Yulee Agnes, born 1917.

James Lewis Thomas Chalmers Spence was a Scottish journalist, poet, author, folklorist and student of the occult. After graduating from Edinburgh University he pursued a career in journalism. He was an editor at The Scotsman 1899-1906, editor of The Edinburgh Magazine for a year, 1904–05, then an editor at The British Weekly, 1906-09. In this time his interest was sparked in the myth and folklore of Mexico and Central America, resulting in his popularisation of the Mayan Popul Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché Mayas (1908). He compiled A Dictionary of Mythology (1910 and numerous additional volumes). Spence was an ardent Scottish nationalist, He was the founder of the Scottish National Movement which later merged to form the National Party of Scotland and which in turn merged to form the Scottish National Party. He unsuccessfully contested a parliamentary seat for Midlothian and Peebles Northern at a by-election in 1929. He also wrote poetry in English and Scots. His Collected Poems were published in 1953. He investigated Scottish folklore and wrote about Brythonic rites and traditions in Mysteries of Celtic Britain (1905). In this book, Spence theorized that the original Britons were descendants of a people that migrated from Northwest Africa and were probably related to the Berbers and the Basques. Spence's researches into the mythology and culture of the New World, together with his examination of the cultures of western Europe and north-west Africa, led him almost inevitably to the question of Atlantis. During the 1920s he published a series of books which sought to rescue the topic from the occultists who had more or less brought it into disrepute. These works, amongst which were The Problem of Atlantis (1924) and History of Atlantis (1927), continued the line of research inaugurated by Ignatius Donnelly and looked at the lost island as a Bronze Age civilization, that formed a cultural link with the New World, which he invoked through examples he found of striking parallels between the early civilizations of the Old and New Worlds. Spence's erudition and the width of his reading, his industry and imagination were all impressive; yet the conclusions he reached, avoiding peer-reviewed journals, have been almost universally rejected by mainstream scholarship. His popularisations met stiff criticism in professional journals, but his continued appeal among theory hobbyists is summed up by a reviewer of The Problem of Atlantis (1924) in The Geographical Journal: "Mr. Spence is an industrious writer, and, even if he fails to convince, has done service in marshalling the evidence and has produced an entertaining volume which is well worth reading." Nevertheless, he seems to have had some influence upon the ideas of controversial author Immanuel Velikovsky, and as his books have come into the public domain, they have been successfully reprinted and some have been scanned for the Internet. Spence's 1940 book Occult Causes of the Present War seems to have been the first book in the field of Nazi occultism. Over his long career, he published more than forty books, many of which remain in print to this day.

Andrew Gabriel Lang was a prolific Scots man of letters. He was a poet, novelist, and literary critic, and a contributor to anthropology. He now is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Young Scholar and Journalist Andrew Gabriel Lang grew up in Selkirk in the Scottish Borders, the son of the town clerk and the eldest of eight children. The wild and beautiful landscape of his childhood had a great effect on the young Lang and inspired in him not only a life-long love of the outdoors but a fascination with local folklore and history. The Borders is an area rich in history and he grew up surrounded by tales of Bonnie Prince Charlie and Robert the Bruce. Amongst his many later literary achievements was his Short History of Scotland. A gifted student and avid reader, Lang went to the prestigious St Andrews University (now holding a lecture series in his honour every few years) and then to Balliol College, Oxford. He would later write about the city in Oxford: Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes, published in 1880. Moving to London at the age of 31, already a published poet, he started working as a journalist. His dry sense of humour, writing style and huge array of interests made him a popular editor and columnist and he was soon writing for The Daily Post, Time magazine and Fortnightly Review. It was whilst working in London that he met and married his wife Leonore Blanche Alleyne. The Fairy Books Amongst the most famous of Andrew Lang books are The Rainbow Fairy Books, growing from Lang's interest in myths and folklore which continued to grow as he and Leonore travelled through France and Italy hearing local legends. In the late 19th century, interest in the native fairy tales of Britain had declined and there were very few books recounting them for young readers. In fact fairy tales and magical stories in general were being attacked by some educationalists as being harmful to children. It was to challenge this notion that Lang first began collecting fairy stories for the first of his coloured fairy books, The Blue Fairy Book. Whilst other folklorists collected stories directly from source, Lang set about gathering those stories which had already been recorded. This gave him time to collect a much greater breadth of fairy tales from all over the world, most from well-known writers such as the Brothers Grimm, Madame d'Aulnoy and others from less well known sources. Whilst Lang also worked as the editor for his work and is often credited as its sole creator, the support of his wife, who transcribed and organised the translation of the text, was essential to the work's success. The Blue Fairy Book was published in 1889 to wide acclaim. The beautiful illustrations and magical tales captivated the minds of children and adults alike. The success of the first book allowed Lang and Leonore to carry on their research and in 1890 they published The Red Fairy Book, which drew on even more sources and had a much larger print run. Between 1889 and 1910 they published twelve collections of fairy tales, each with a different coloured binding, with a total of 437 stories collected, edited and translated. The books are credited with reviving interest in folklore, but more importantly for Lang, they revolutionised the Victorian view of fairy tales - inspiring generations of parents to begin reading them to children once more. Last Works At the same time as he was producing the Fairy Books, Lang continued to write a wide assortment of novels, literary criticism, articles and poetry. However, as literary critic Anita Silvey noted, 'The irony of Lang's life and work is that although he wrote for a profession... he is best recognised for the works he did not write.' - the Rainbow Fairy Books. The last Andrew Lang book, Highways and Byways of the Border remained unfinished after his death on 20th July 1912;

George W. Bateman is the author of the famous Zanzibar Tales, which were supposedly the inspiration for a lot of Disney stories like Bambi, The Lion King etc. Bateman translated these folk stories, which were "narrated to him by the locals of Zanzibar" to English.

American orientalist, Congregational minister, lecturer. Griffis was an English and Latin language tutor for Tarō Kusakabe, a young samurai from the province of Echizen. In September 1870 Griffis was invited to Japan to organize schools along modern lines.

Ignác Kúnos was a Hungarian linguist, turkologist, folklorist, a correspondent member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Ignác Kúnos (22 Ekim 1860 – 12 Ocak 1945), Türk dili, halk edebiyatı ve halkbilimi üzerine yapıtlarıyla tanınmış Macar Türkolog. Kúnos Ignác vagy Kunos Ignác, 1881-ig Lusztig Ignác (Hajdúsámson, 1860. szeptember 22. – Budapest, 1945. január 12.) nyelvész, turkológus, folklorista, a Magyar Tudományos Akadémia levelező (1893) tagja. At his time he was one of the most recognised scholars of the Turkish folk literature and Turkish dialectology. Grandfather of George Kunos (1942) American-Hungarian neuroendocrinologist, pharmacologist. He attended the Reformed College in Debrecen, then studied linguistics at the Budapest University between 1879 and 1882. With the financial support of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Budapest Jewish community he spent five years in Constantinople studying Turkish language and culture. In 1890 he was appointed at the Budapest University as professor of the Turkish philology. Between 1899-1919 he was the director of the newly organized Oriental College of Commerce in Budapest. From 1919 until 1922 he held the same post at the Oriental Institute integrated into the Budapest University of Economics, and then from 1922 he taught Turkish linguistic at the university. In the summer of 1925 and 1926, invited by the Turkish government, he was professor at the Ankara and Istanbul Universities, besides this in 1925 he organized the Department of Folkloristics at the Istanbul University. He died during the soviet siege of Budapest. Ignác Kúnos (22 Ekim 1860 – 12 Ocak 1945), Türk dili, halk edebiyatı ve halkbilimi üzerine yapıtlarıyla tanınmış Macar Türkolog. Kúnos, Türk halk edebiyatının Batı ülkelerine tanıtılmasında öncü olmuştur. İlk ve orta öğrenimini Debrecen'de yaptı. Üniversiteyi Budapeşte'de bitirdi. Öğrencilik yıllarında Macar halk diline ve kültürüne ilgi gösterdi; Hungaristik alanında çalışmalar yaptı. Daha sonra Türkçe öğrendi ve Ármin Vámbéry, Josef Budenz ve Bernát Munkácsi gibi ünlü türkologların derslerini izledi. 1885'te bir süre Bulgaristan'daki Türkler arasında yaşadıktan (1885) sonra Anadolu'da beş yıl süren bir araştırma gezisine çıktı. Bu sırada Macar Bilimler Akademisi'ne gönderdiği veriler, bilim çevrelerinde ilgiyle karşılandı. 1890'da Macaristan'a döndü. Gezi boyunca derlediği türküleri, halk masalları ve öykülerini, ayrıca Karagöz, ortaoyunu, Nasreddin Hoca ve bazı geleneklere ilişkin notlarını yayımlayarak kısa sürede Türk halkbilimi alanındaki en ünlü adlardan biri oldu. Rumeli ve Anadolu Türkleri arasındaki farklılıkları da yansıtarak tanıttığı Türk dili ve edebiyatı ürünlerinden bir bölümü, Vasili Radlof'un 10 ciltlik Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme (1866-1907; Türk Kavimlerinin Halk Edebiyatından Örnekler) adlı yapıtının 8. cildi (1899) içinde yayımlandı. 1925-26'da Türk hükümetinin çağrılısı olarak Ankara ve İstanbul'a gitti ve konferanslar verdi. Bernát Munkácsi ile birlikte, dönemin önde gelen Türkoloji yayınlarından Keleti Szemle dergisini yönetti. Macar Bilimler Akademisi, Uluslararası Orta ve Doğu Asya Derneği, Paris'teki Asya Derneği gibi kuruluşların da üyesiydi. Kúnos Ignác vagy Kunos Ignác, 1881-ig Lusztig Ignác (Hajdúsámson, 1860. szeptember 22. – Budapest, 1945. január 12.) nyelvész, turkológus, folklorista, a Magyar Tudományos Akadémia levelező (1893) tagja. Addig egyedülálló terjedelmű és úttörő jellegű török népköltészeti gyűjtéseinek – és legfőképp a török népmesekincs feltárásának – köszönhetően korának európai szinten legelismertebb turkológusai közé tartozott, elévülhetetlen érdeme a török népköltészeti alkotások be bevonása az európai szövegfolklorisztikai kutatásokba. Számottevő eredményeket ért el a török nyelvészet és dialektológia területén, fél évszázadon keresztül volt a budapesti tudományegyetemen a török filológia tanára.

Hélène Adeline Guerber (1859 – 1929), better known as H.A. Guerber, was a British historian most well known for her written histories of Germanic mythology. Her most well known work is Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas - George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd., 1908 in London. Other histories by Guerber include Legends of the Rhine (A.S. Barnes & Co., New York, 1895; new edition 1905), Stories of the Wagner Opera, The Book of the Epic, The Story of the Ancient World, The Story of the Greeks, The Story of the Romans, Legends of the Middle Ages, The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation, The Story of the Thirteen Colonies, and The Story of the Great Republic.

Algernon Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale Usually published under the name A.B. Mitford. The member of a distinguished British literary family, A. B. Mitford traveled widely with his parents as a youth and lived in various European countries. From 1866-70, he served as an attaché with the British legation at Edo (Tokyo) — one of the first foreign diplomats to do so. During his brief stay there, Mitford lived through a period of dramatic and tumultuous change in Japanese history. A feudal nation on his arrival, Japan had entered the era of “Westernization” before he left some three years later. During that time, however, he quickly and thoroughly mastered the Japanese language and acted as an interpreter between the young Japanese Emperor and British royalty.

William Forsell Kirby (14 January 1844 - 20 November 1912) was an English entomologist and folklorist. He was born in Leicester. He was the eldest son of Samuel Kirby, who was a banker. He was educated privately, and became interested in butterflies and moths at an early age. The family moved to Brighton, where he became acquainted with Henry Cooke, Frederick Merrifield and J N Winter. He published the Manual of European Butterflies in 1862. In 1867 he became a curator in the Museum of the Royal Dublin Society, and produced a Synonymic Catalogue of Diurnal Lepidoptera (1871; Supplement 1877). In 1879 Kirby joined the staff of the Natural History Museum as an assistant, after the death of Frederick Smith. He published a number of catalogues, as well as Rhopalocera Exotica (1887–1897) and an Elementary Text-book of Entomology. He retired in 1909. Kirby had a wide range of interests, knew many languages and fully translated the Finland's national epic, the Kalevala, from Finnish into English. Kirby's translation, which carefully reproduces the Kalevala meter, was a major influence on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, who first read it in his teens. Kirby provided many footnotes to Sir Richard Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights. Kirby also did important work on orthopteroid insects including a three volume Catalogue of all known species (1904, 1906, 1910). A short biography of Kirby, with particular reference to his work on phasmids was published by Bragg in 2007. Works Entomology * Manual of European Butterflies. 1862 * Synonymic Catalogue of Diurnal Lepidoptera. 1871 * Catalogue of the collection of diurnal Lepidoptera formed by the late William Chapman Hewitson of Oatlands, Walton on Thames; and bequeathed by him to the British Museum. London, John Van Voorst. iv + 246 pp.[[18 * A Hand-book to the Order Lepidoptera. 1896. * Familiar butterflies and moths. 1901 * Butterflies and moths of Europe (Illustrated). 1903 * Elementary Text-book of Entomology. * Marvels of Ant Life. Circa 1890s * A Synonymic Catalogue of Orthoptera. British Museum (Natural History), London. 3 volumes: 1904, 1906, 1910 He is also credited on a few other works: * Illustrations of diurnal Lepidoptera by William Chapman Hewitson 1863 * Natural history. by Richard Lydekker 1897 Literary works * Kalevala the Land of Heroes. 1907. * The Hero of Esthonia and other studies in the romantic literature of that country. 1895 * Contributions to the Bibliography of the Thousand and One Nights and Their Imitations (An appendix to Volume 10 to Richard F. Burton's translation of The Nights. 1886

Also known as W.R.S. Ralston William Ralston Shedden-Ralston (born William Shedden and later known as William Ralston) was a noted British scholar of Russia and translator and Russian. He was the only son of W. P. Ralston Shedden, who made his fortune as a merchant in Calcutta and set up home in Palmira Square, Brighton, when he returned to England. William spent most of his early years there. Together with three or four other boys he studied under the Rev. John Hogg of Brixham, Devonshire, until he went to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1846, where he graduated with a BA in 1850. During this period William's father entered into a lengthy but unsuccessful litigation over his claim to Ralston estates in Ayrshire. The cost dissipated his fortune. The family pressed the claim for many years. Shedden's only sister took up the pleadings, and at one stage conducted the case before a committee of the House of Lords for more than thirty days. William had been called to the bar before the litigation began, but the change in the family's fortunes forced him to seek immediate remunerative employment. He also adopted the additional surname of Shedden. In 1853 he went to work as a junior assistant in the printed-book department of the British Museum, where his zeal and ability won the respect of his superiors. The work began with the requisite two years copying titles for the printed books catalogue, and thereafter he rose slowly through the ranks. When he saw a need for someone who could catalogue Russian books, he began studying Russian, and even learned pages of the dictionary by heart. He also studied Russian literature. He translated 93 of Ivan Andreevich Krylov's two hundred fables, and this work, published in 1868 as Krilof and his Fables, ran to numerous editions. The following year he brought out a translation of Ivan Turgenev's Nest of Gentlefolk as Liza; in 1872, his 439-page Songs of the Russian People as Illustrative of Slavonic Mythology and Russian Social Life, and in 1873 a bloodthirsty collection of Russian Folk Tales. He made two or three journeys to Russia, formed numerous literary acquaintances there, and had a lasting friendship with Turgenev. He also became a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg. He visited Serbia twice, and made numerous visits to Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland. In 1874 he published Early Russian History, the substance of four lectures delivered at the Taylor Institution in Oxford. His visits to Russia were mainly to collect material for another, more comprehensive account. Having contracted for its publication with Messrs. Cassell & Co, at the last moment he allowed them to cancel the agreement and publish instead Donald Mackenzie Wallace's book Russia. He also possessed a gift for narrating stories orally. He devised a novel form of public entertainment, telling stories to large audiences in lecture-halls, making several successful appearances at St. George's and St James' Halls. He gave story-tellings to the young princes and princesses at Marlborough House, and to other social gatherings; and also, in aid of charities, to audiences in east London and the provinces. His health failing, he resigned from the British Museum in 1875 and sought to devote himself to literary work, but he was susceptible to acute depression and became increasingly withdrawn. Nevertheless he wrote for the Athenæum magazine and the Saturday Review, as well as the Nineteenth Century and other magazines.

Edward Theodore Chalmers Werner (1864–1954) was a noted British diplomat in Qing Dynasty China and sinologist specialising in superstition, myths and magic in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.\_T.\_C...

German philologist and folklorist Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm in 1822 formulated Grimm's Law, the basis for much of modern comparative linguistics. With his brother Wilhelm Karl Grimm (1786-1859), he collected Germanic folk tales and published them as Grimm's Fairy Tales (1812-1815). Indo-European stop consonants, represented in Germanic, underwent the regular changes that Grimm's Law describes; this law essentially states that Indo-European p shifted to Germanic f, t shifted to th, and k shifted to h. Indo-European b shifted to Germanic p, d shifted to t, and g shifted to k. Indo-European bh shifted to Germanic b, dh shifted to d, and gh shifted to g. This jurist and mythologist also authored the monumental German Dictionary and his Deutsche Mythologie . Adapted from Wikipedia.

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929). Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. —from Wikipedia