Charlotte Sophia Burne

Charlotte Sophia Burne (2 May 1850 – 1923), also known as Lotty, was an English author, editor and folklorist. She was the first woman to become president of The Folklore Society (FLS) and the first female president of any learned society in the country. She was the author of county folklore histories of Shropshire and Staffordshire.

Life Charlotte Sophia Burne was born on 2 May 1850 at Moreton vicarage in Staffordshire, near to the border with Shropshire, the first child of Charlotte Burne and Sambrooke Burne's six children. Her parents had arrived at the vicarage the day before, after leaving Loynton Hall on an ancestral estate in Staffordshire, as the guests of her uncle the Reverend Tom Burne. Her father was a country squire from a gentry family, of no fixed abode, and she was educated by governesses with her siblings. having exhausted their welcome in Moreton. Her father received debilitating injuries in a hunting accident in 1857, Jackson was collecting material for her Shropshire Word Book (1879) and its companion work with the provisional title of "Folk-lore Gleanings" on "dialecting tours". She included a description of the "Clipping the Church", a local Shrovetide custom where children join hands circle the outside of a church, which has similarities to a custom in Somerset.

The exhaustive collection was well received and continues to be favourably viewed, her obituary gave the remark "the first time the folklore of a county was published—at any rate in a form so complete and so scientific" She was also the first woman to become president of the FLS, serving from 1909 to 1910,

Burne's written works include the large collection, Shropshire Folk-Lore (1886), and preparation of the second edition of the Folklore Society's official Handbook of Folklore (1914). and subsequently folk-lore, was probably fostered by her mother. She was prompted by those connected to the family to compile a genealogical history of the Mildmay family, her first manuscript for this still exists, and the editing of the poet Richard Barnfield works. Her talents as an editor were initially recognised in Robert William Eyton's acknowledgements in his Doomsday Studies and the subsequent accolades in a local newspaper.

Select publications

Shropshire Folk-Lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings (1883-1886) The Collection of English Folk-Lore (1890) Stafforshire Folk and their Lore (1896) Handbook of Folklore (1914)