Harold William Thompson

Harold William "Tommy" Thompson (1891–1964) was an American folklorist and historian. He was also a competent musician, specialising in playing the organ.

Early life and education

Thompson was born in Buffalo, New York in 1891. After graduating from Westfield College in 1908, he graduated with a B.Phil. from Hamilton College in 1912. Thompson then studied at Harvard University, gaining a M.A (1913) a Ph.D. (1915). At Harvard, he studied under George Kitteridge, "one of the key figures in the development of folklore as an academic discipline in the United States".

Career Thompson was trained as a literary scholar and his early research was focused on Henry Mackenzie, a Scottish lawyer and writer. Over time, his interest and then research grew into folklore and history. In 1940 he joined Cornell University as a Lecturer in English and became Professor of English in 1951.

From 1936 to 1939 he corresponded with Ezra Pound. Both Thompson and Pound were graduates of Hamilton College.

Folklore As a teacher, Thompson was one of the first American Folklorists to send students out to collect lore in their local environs. It has been noted that most of the students who contributed to Body, Books and Britches, were young women training to be teachers.

In 1944, with Louis C. Jones Thompson founded the New York Folklore Society. Thompson served as the Society's President for many years and also edited The New York Folk Quarterly.

Thompson aimed to popularise folklore and make it accessible to a nonacademic audience. However, he did receive criticism from some folklorists for his popularist tendencies.

Later years Thompson retired in 1959, living his final years in Homer, New York. He worked in his later years on a book on African American folklore, which was never finished in his lifetime.

Honours In 1932 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were William Metzler, John Alexander Inglis, Robert Hannay and Charles Galton Darwin. Elected as an Ordinary Fellow rather than Foreign or Honorary Fellow, this indicates his physical presence in Edinburgh at that time.

Selected publications

Lincoln, Abraham, Hastings, Harry W; Thompson, Harold W (1921). Selections from the works of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Ambrose & Co. OCLC 934140753. Mackenzie, Henry; Thompson, Harold William (1927). Anecdotes and egotisms, now first published. Edited with an introd. by Harold William Thompson. London: Oxford University Press. OCLC 223371985. Thompson, Harold William (1984). A Scottish man of feeling; some account of Henry Mackenzie, of Edinburgh, and of the golden age of Burns and Scott. London; New York: Oxford University Press. OCLC 248855993. Thompson, Harold William (1939). Body, boots & britches: folktales, ballads and speech from Country New York. N.Y., N.Y.: Dover Publications. OCLC 220737709. Thompson, Harold William (1958). A pioneer songster; texts from the Stevens-Douglass manuscript of western New York, 1841-1856., Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1958, OCLC 918778, retrieved 2022-03-05 Thompson, Harold William (1962). New York State folktales, legends and ballads. New York: Dover Publications. OCLC 33089992.