The Native Races of Africa and Madagascar. A Copious Selection of Passages for the Study of Social Anthropology from the Manuscript Notebooks of Sir James George Frazer, OM. FRS. FBA. 'Anthologia Anthropologica'.

Published by Percy Lund Humphries & Co. Ltd., London, 1938, hardcover, many maps, index, 578 pages, 23 cms x 28.7 cms x 5.7 cms, ex- reference library book (never lent out) with usual stamps, otherwise condition : very good.

 Sir James George Frazer was thirty-six when he wrote the seminal "The Golden Bough",  said to have influenced the work of  Jung, T S Eliot,  James Joyce and others.

Forty -seven years later Frazer decided to publish selections from his forty or so thick quarto notebooks on the anthropological writings of others.

 A year later, in 1938, "The Native Races of Africa and Madagascar" was published as the first of the series - "Anthologia Anthropologica".

 Subtitled "A Copious Selection of Passages for the Study of Social Anthropology from the Manuscript Notebooks of [J G Frazer] Arranged and Edited from the MSS by Robert Angus Downie".

In the introduction, Downie describes how he went about his work  sorting, arranging and copying the extracts according to continent (Africa first), and then region and race. Frazer lived to see the full series published - after Africa, Australia, followed by Asia and Europe, and, finally, America, with the last three all published 1939 - all under Downie's editorship and in a uniform edition from the same publisher.

The book is comprehensive: it deals with Bushmen, Hottentots and a dozen other races in Southern Africa, and almost another one hundred races in the rest of the continent.

Full references to the sources of the extracts are given at the end of each entry.

Sir James George Frazer was a Scottish social anthropologist and folklorist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion.