The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren by Iona Opie - ISBN: 9780940322691
Paperback
Children’s secret world of rhymes, jokes, games, and spells revealed.

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren

$48.45

  • Paperback

    488 pages

  • Release Date

    15 September 2006

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Summary

First published in 1959, Iona and Peter Opie’s The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren is a pathbreaking work of scholarship that is also a splendid and enduring work of literature. Going outside the nursery, with its assortment of parent-approved entertainments, to observe and investigate the day-to-day creative intelligence and activities of children, the Opies bring to life the rites and rhymes, jokes and jeers, laws, games, and secret spells of what has been called “the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which shows no signs of dying out.”

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780940322691
ISBN-10:0940322692
Author:Iona Opie, Peter Opie
Publisher:New York Review Books
Imprint:NYRB Classics
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:488
Edition:Main
Release Date:15 September 2006
Weight:475g
Dimensions:127mm x 204mm
Series:NYRB Classics S.
A-Format
B-Format
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren by Iona Opie - ISBN: 9780940322691
127 × 204 mm
C-Format
A4
mm / in
What They're Saying

Critics Review

“The Opies, professors of literature and essentially folklorists, did something path-breaking: they observed children and took their play seriously… The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren

“The Opies, professors of literature and essentially folklorists, did something path-breaking: they observed children and took their play seriously…The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren reminds us that children are their own beings who create and navigate complicated social worlds, and the way they do so is worthy of respect and understanding.” —Hilary Levey Friedman, Brain, Child Magazine

About The Author

Iona Opie

Iona (1923-2017) and Peter Opie (1918-1982) began their research together in 1944. Fifteen years later, they published The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren and took their places as, to quote The Guardian, “the supreme archivists of the folklore movement.” Since that time, they have jointly published The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, The Classic Fairy Tales, and Children’s Game in Street and Playground.

After Peter Opie’s death in 1982, Iona Opie carried on with their work under his name as well as her own.

Marina Warner’s studies of religion, mythology, and fairy tales include Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, From the Beast to the Blonde, and Stranger Magic (National Book Critics Circle Award for Literary Criticism; Truman Capote Prize). A Fellow of the British Academy, Warner is also a professor of English and creative writing at Birkbeck College, London. In 2015 she was given the Holberg Prize.

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