Robert Henry Codrington (15 September 1830,

Wroughton Wroughton is a large village and civil parish in northeast Wiltshire, England. It is part of the Borough of Swindon and lies along the A4361 between Swindon and Avebury; the road into Swindon crosses the M4 motorway between junctions 15 ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

– 11 September 1922)Davidson, Allan K. "The Legacy of Robert Henry Codrington." ''International Bulletin of Missionary Research.'' Oct 2003, Vol. 27 Issue 4, p. 171-176
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was an Anglican priest and anthropologist who made the first study of

Melanesia Melanesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from Indonesia's New Guinea in the west to Fiji in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea. The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Va ...

society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soci ...

and

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...

. His work is still held as a classic of ethnography. Codrington wrote, "One of the first duties of a missionary is to try to understand the people among whom he works,"''The Melanesians.'' Robert Codrington. and he himself reflected a deep commitment to this value. Codrington worked as headmaster of the

Melanesian Mission The Melanesian Mission is an Anglican missionary agency supporting the work of local Anglican churches in Melanesia. It was founded in 1849 by George Selwyn, the first Bishop of New Zealand. History Bishop Selwyn's see was focused on New Zealand. ...

school on Norfolk Island from 1867 to 1887. Over his many years with the Melanesian people, he gained a deep knowledge of their society, languages, and customs through a close association with them. He also intensively studied "

Melanesian languages In linguistics, Melanesian is an obsolete term referring to the Austronesian languages of Melanesia: that is, the Oceanic, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, or Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages apart from Polynesian and Micronesian. A typ ...

", including the Mota language.

Bibliography of works by Codrington

* ''A Sketch of Mota Grammar.'' (1877).
full text from the Internet Archive
. * ''The Melanesian Languages.'' (1885). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
full text from the Internet Archive
.
''The Melanesians: Studies in their Anthropology and Folk-Lore''
(1891). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
full text from the Internet Archive
. * ''A Dictionary of the Language of Mota, Sugarloaf Island, Banks' Islands: With a short grammar and index.'' London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. * "Melanesians." ''Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics''. Ed. James Hastings. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 8:529–38.

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External links

*
Bibliography of works by or about Codrington
from Project Canterbury 1830 births 1922 deaths Anglican saints People from Wroughton 19th-century English Anglican priests 20th-century English Anglican priests English anthropologists Ethnographers 20th-century Christian saints {{ethnographer-stub