Mary Eliza Isabella Frere (1845–1911) (nickname ''May'') was an English author of works regarding India. In 1868 Frere published the first English-language field-collected book of Indian storytales, ''Old Deccan Days''.

Early life

Frere was born at the rectory of

Bitton Bitton is a village and civil parish of South Gloucestershire in England, to the east of the Greater Bristol area on the River Boyd. It is in South Gloucestershire. The parish of Bitton has a population of 9,307, and apart from the village ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

, England on 11 August 1845. Nicknamed ''May'', she was the eldest of five children (the others being

Catherine Katherine, also spelled Catherine, and other variations are feminine names. They are popular in Christian countries because of their derivation from the name of one of the first Christian saints, Catherine of Alexandria. In the early Christ ...

, Georgina, Eliza and Bartle) of

Henry Bartle Frere Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere, 1st Baronet, (29 March 1815 – 29 May 1884) was a Welsh British colonial administrator. He had a successful career in India, rising to become Governor of Bombay (1862–1867). However, as High Commissioner for ...

and his wife Catherine (died 1899) who was the daughter of Lieutenant-General

Sir George Arthur, 1st Baronet Sir George Arthur, 1st Baronet (21 June 1784 – 19 September 1854) was Lieutenant Governor of British Honduras from 1814 to 1822 and of Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania) from 1823 to 1836. The campaign against Aboriginal Tasmania ...

. Mary's father had served in the colonial administration of

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

since 1834, and in 1862 he was appointed

Governor of Bombay Until the 18th century, Bombay consisted of seven islands separated by shallow sea. These seven islands were part of a larger archipelago in the Arabian sea, off the western coast of India. The date of city's founding is unclear—historians tr ...

. The family lived in the Parish of St Mary, Wimbledon, where Mary was privately educated. Dorson, R. M. (1999).
History of British folklore
'. Taylor and Francis. . p. 334.Rootsweb. 1871 census - Frere household in Wimbledon
/ref>

Published works

Frere published several poems and a play. Her most popular work was ''Old Deccan Days; or, Hindoo Fairy Legends, Current in Southern India. Collected From Oral Tradition'', printed in 1868, with illustrations by her sister Catherine Frances Frere. According to Frere's introduction, she began her collection of

Indian folklore The folklore of India encompasses the folklore of the nation of India and the Indian subcontinent. India is an ethnically and religiously diverse country. Given this diversity, it is difficult to generalize the vast folklore of India as a unit. ...

during long travels with her father. Her only female companion was a local ayah named Anna Liberata de Souza. She was a Christian descendant of the Lingaet caste from the Mahratta country. What started as an idle conversation evolved into a thorough recording and study of Indian culture. German orientologist

Max Müller Friedrich Max Müller (; 6 December 1823 – 28 October 1900) was a German-born philologist and Orientalist, who lived and studied in Britain for most of his life. He was one of the founders of the western academic disciplines of Indian ...

reviewed Frere's collection and wrote that her rendition of

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

originals read like a direct translation of ancient Sanskrit. Frere's father assisted with the editing of the work and wrote an introduction to the first edition of ''Old Deccan Days''.Dorson, p. 335. The extensive background and 'Narrator's Narrative' supplied in the work is unusual for the period, placing the tales in the context of the difficult life of the teller. The book was a success; by the time of the third English edition (1881) it was printed in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

, Hungarian,

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

and

Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub ...

languages. The book was republished with an introduction by

Kirin Narayan Kirin Narayan (born November 1959) is an Indian-born American anthropologist, folklorist and writer. Early life, education, and career Narayan is the daughter of Narayan Ramji Contractor, a civil engineer from Nashik, and Didi Kinzinger, a Ger ...

in 2002. In the introduction to his 1892 Indian volume of fairy tales,

Joseph Jacobs Joseph Jacobs (29 August 1854 – 30 January 1916) was an Australian folklorist, translator, literary critic, social scientist, historian and writer of English literature who became a notable collector and publisher of English folklore. Jacob ...

reprinted and acknowledged Frere's contribution to these:

Though Indian fairy tales are the earliest in existence, yet they are also from another point of view the youngest. For it is only about twenty-five years ago that Miss Frere began the modern collection of Indian folk-tales with her charming "Old Deccan Days".

Catherine edited '' The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie'', helping to publish it in 1909 after Lady Clark's death at her husband Sir John Forbes Clark's invitation. The work was praised by the novelist

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

and the cookery writer

Elizabeth David Elizabeth David CBE (born Elizabeth Gwynne, 26 December 1913 – 22 May 1992) was a British cookery writer. In the mid-20th century she strongly influenced the revitalisation of home cookery in her native country and beyond with articles and bo ...

Death and commemoration

Frere died in Sussex on 26 March 1911. She is buried at

Brookwood cemetery Brookwood Cemetery, also known as the London Necropolis, is a burial ground in Brookwood, Surrey, England. It is the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in Europe. The cemetery is listed a Grade I site in the Regist ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Frere, Mary English folklorists Women folklorists Ethnographers English Indologists 1845 births 1911 deaths English women non-fiction writers Burials at Brookwood Cemetery People from Bitton British women anthropologists Daughters of baronets