The Secret Autobiography of Francis James Child

Abstract:Beginning in 1847, a year after his graduation from Harvard College, Francis James Child, beloved Harvard professor, first president of the American Folklore Society, and perhaps the greatest ballad scholar of the nineteenth century, began what would become a twenty-year correspondence with his closest college friend and future brother-in-law, William Ellery Sedgwick. Based on this previously unknown cache of letters contained among the Sedgwick family papers deposited at the Massachusetts Historical Society, this essay will examine the first five years of Child's self-described "secret autobiography" for what it tells about the emotional experiences that shaped the man behind the ballads when he was a young, struggling academic trying to establish himself at Harvard, and not yet the patronym for traditional balladry.