The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging study of mythology and religion spanning most of recorded history and most of the known world at the time. Throughout the focus is on the similarities and shared elements that exist in different cultures in fertility rites, human and animal sacrifices, rituals of dying and reviving gods and kings, the significance of trees, plants and animals. The book had its origin in an examination of The Golden Bough, a painting by J. M. W. Turner illustrating an incident in The Aeneid where the Sibyl presents a golden bough from a tree in a sacred grove to the gatekeeper of Hades to gain admission. It grew into an encyclopedic study first published in two volumes in 1890, expanding to twelve volumes in the third edition published between 1906-15. Intended for educated members of the general public already familiar with The Age of Fable and Stories of Gods and Heroes by Thomas Bulfinch, the book created something of a scandal by including the Christian story of Jesus and the Resurrection in the study. The scope of the material combined with rigorous scholarship and keen insight made the book an important influence on the emerging discipline of anthropology. It is now seen as a foundational work in the history of ideas and is often cited as an inspiration to much of Modernist literature, influencing major writers from T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Sigmund Freud and D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Campbell, Mary Renault and Camilla Paglia, to name just a few.

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