Francis James Child English and Scottish popular ballad research materials,

Francis James Child (1825-1896) was born in Boston, the third of eight children of Joseph Child and his wife Mary James Child. He was a graduate of Harvard College, A.B. 1846. After graduation he remained at Cambridge as tutor in mathematics (1846-1848) and later in history and political economy (1848-1849). From 1849 to 1851 he studied philosophy, the classics, and Germanic philology at the University of Göttingen. Upon his return to Harvard he became the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. In 1860, he married Elizabeth Ellery Sedgwick, daughter of Robert Sedgwick of New York, and they had three daughters and one son.

In 1876, Child was made professor of English and devoted himself thereafter to the teaching and study of literature. His chief works were on Spenser and Chaucer, and he is best known for his research into the history of English and Scottish ballads, first publishing English and Scottish Ballads (8 vols., 1857-1858), and later, his edition of 305 distinct English and Scottish ballads and their textual variants, English and Scottish Popular Ballads (5 vols., originally issued in 10 parts, 1882-1898). Ballad texts for this edition were culled from manuscript and printed materials extant at the end of the 19th century. This published text was planned "to include every obtainable version of every extant English or Scottish ballad, with the fullest possible discussion of related songs or stories in the popular literature of all nations." The tenth part was virtually complete, except for a general introduction to the whole work, at the time of Child's death in 1896.

At his death, Child left behind a great wealth of manuscripts, copies, letters, and other material pertaining to his study of ballads. George Lyman Kittredge (Harvard A.B. 1882), who was Child's former student, was Child's successor to the Boylston Professorship, and later was Harvard's first Gurney Professor of English (1917). It was Kittredge who spent hundreds of hours organizing this material which he referred to as the "Child MSS" or "Child Manuscripts." The 33 volumes described in this finding aid are the organized product of Kittredge's work, and reflect the order which he imposed upon it. It was Kittredge, also, who completed the last volume of Child's ballad compendium and saw it through to publication. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads is now said to be the publication that established the groundwork for English-speaking ballad scholarship in the 20th century.