Edward Clodd was an English banker, writer and anthropologist

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

. He cultivated a very wide circle of literary and scientific friends, who periodically met at Whitsun

Whitsun

Whitsun is the name used in the UK for the Christian festival of Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter, which commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ's disciples...

 gatherings at his home at Aldeburgh

Aldeburgh

Aldeburgh is a coastal town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. Located on the River Alde, the town is notable for its Blue Flag shingle beach and fisherman huts where freshly caught fish are sold daily, and the Aldeburgh Yacht Club...

, Suffolk

Suffolk

Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

.

Although born in Margate, where his father was captain of a trading brig, the family moved soon afterwards to Aldeburgh, his father's ancestors deriving from Parham

Parham

-Places:in Antigua and Barbuda*Parham, Antigua and Barbuda, that claims to be the oldest town on Antigua*The Parham Peninsulain Canada*Parham, Ontarioin England*Parham Airfield Museum*Parham Park the area surrounding Parham House in West Sussex...

 and Framlingham

Framlingham

Framlingham is a market town and civil parish in the Suffolk Coastal District of Suffolk, England. Commonly referred to as "Fram" by the locals, it is of Anglo-Saxon origin and is mentioned in the Domesday Book. It has a population of 3,114 at the 2001 census...

 in Suffolk. Born to a Baptist

Baptist

Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

 family, his parents wished him to become a minister, but he declined and instead went into accountancy and banking, moving to London in 1855. He worked for the London Joint Stock Bank from 1872 to 1915, and had residences both in London and Suffolk.

Clodd was an early follower of the work of Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

 and had personal acquaintance with Thomas Huxley

Thomas Huxley

Thomas Henry Huxley PC FRS was an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution....

 and Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....

. He wrote biographies of all three men, and worked to popularise evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

 through books like The Childhood of the World and The Story of Creation: A Plain Account of Evolution.

He was also a keen folklorist

Folklore

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

, joining the Folklore Society

Folklore Society

The Folklore Society was founded in England in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts and crafts, customs and belief...

 from 1878, and later becoming its president. He was chairman of the Rationalist Press Association from 1906 to 1913. He was a Suffolk Secretary of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia from 1914-1916. He was a prominent member and officer of the Omar Khayyam Club or 'O.K. Club', and organized the planting of the rose from Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyám

Omar Khayyám was aPersian polymath: philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, climatology and theology....

's tomb onto the grave of Edward Fitzgerald

Edward Fitzgerald

Edward Fitzgerald may refer to:* Lord Edward FitzGerald , Irish revolutionary*Edward Fitzgerald , Irish* Edward FitzGerald, 7th Duke of Leinster * Edward Fitzgerald...

 at Boulge

Boulge

Boulge is a hamlet and civil parish in the Suffolk Coastal district of Suffolk, England. It is about north of Woodbridge.Boulge church is the burial place of famous local poet/writer Edward Fitzgerald, whose most famous work was the translation The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.-External links:*...

, Suffolk, at the Centenary gathering.

Clodd had a talent for friendship, and liked to entertain his friends at literary gatherings in Aldeburgh at his seafront home there, Strafford House, at Whitsuntide. Prominent among his literary friends and correspondents were Grant Allen

Grant Allen

Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen was a science writer, author and novelist, and a successful upholder of the theory of evolution.-Biography:...

, George Meredith

George Meredith

George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...

, Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

, George Gissing

George Gissing

George Robert Gissing was an English novelist who published twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.-Early life:...

, Edward Fitzgerald

Edward Fitzgerald

Edward Fitzgerald may refer to:* Lord Edward FitzGerald , Irish revolutionary*Edward Fitzgerald , Irish* Edward FitzGerald, 7th Duke of Leinster * Edward Fitzgerald...

, Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...

, Cotter Morison, Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler (novelist)

Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh...

, Mary Kingsley

Mary Kingsley

Mary Henrietta Kingsley was an English writer and explorer who greatly influenced European ideas about Africa and African people.-Early life:Kingsley was born in Islington, London on 13 October 1862...

 and Mrs Lynn Linton

Eliza Lynn Linton

Eliza Lynn Linton , was a British novelist, essayist, and journalist.-Life:The daughter of a clergyman and granddaughter of a bishop of Carlisle, she arrived in London in 1845 as the protégé of poet Walter Savage Landor. In the following year she produced her first novel, Azeth, the Egyptian;...

: he also counted Sir Henry Thompson

Sir Henry Thompson, 1st Baronet

Sir Henry Thompson, 1st Baronet FRCS , British surgeon and polymath, was born at Framlingham, Suffolk.-Medical career:...

, Sir William Huggins

William Huggins

Sir William Huggins, OM, KCB, FRS was an English amateur astronomer best known for his pioneering work in astronomical spectroscopy.-Biography:...

, Sir Laurence Gomme

Laurence Gomme

Sir Laurence Gomme, FSA was a public servant and leading British folklorist. He helped found both the Victoria County History and the Folklore Society...

, Sir John Rhys

John Rhys

Sir John Rhys was a Welsh scholar, fellow of the British Academy, celticist and the first Professor of Celtic at Oxford University.-Early years and education:...

, Paul du Chaillu

Paul du Chaillu

Paul Belloni du Chaillu was a French-American traveler and anthropologist. He became famous in the 1860s as the first modern outsider to confirm the existence of gorillas and the Pygmy people of central Africa. He later researched the prehistory of Scandinavia.-Early life:His date and place of...

, Edward Whymper

Edward Whymper

Edward Whymper , was an English illustrator, climber and explorer best known for the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865. On the descent four members of the party were killed.-Early life:...

, Alfred Comyn Lyall

Alfred Comyn Lyall

Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall, GCIE, KCB was a British civil servant, literary historian and poet.-Early life:He was born at Coulsdon in Surrey, the second son of Alfred Lyall and Mary Drummond Broadwood, daughter of James Shudi Broadwood. He was educated at Eton...

, York Powell, William Holman Hunt

William Holman Hunt

William Holman Hunt OM was an English painter, and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Biography:...

, Sir E. Ray Lankester, H.G. Wells and many others in his immediate circle. His hospitality and friendship was an important cement in the development of their social connections.

Works

The following list is incomplete. Biographies of Darwin, Wallace and Spencer exist.

• 1872: The Childhood of the World
• 1880: Jesus of Nazareth. Kegan Paul, London.
• 1882: Nature Studies. (with Grant Allen
  Grant Allen
  Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen was a science writer, author and novelist, and a successful upholder of the theory of evolution.-Biography:...
  
  , Andrew Wilson, Thomas Foster and Richard Proctor) Wyman, London.
• 1888: The Story of Creation: A plain account of evolution
• 1891: Myths and dreams. Chatto & Windus, London.
• 1893: The story of human origins (with S. Laing). Chapman & Hall, London.
• 1895: A Primer of Evolution Longmans, Green, New York.
• 1895: The story of “primitive” Man. Newnes, London; Appleton, New York.
• 1896: The childhood of religions. Kegan Paul, London.
• 1897: Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley. Grant Richards, London.
• 1898: Tom Tit Tot: An essay on savage philosophy in folk-tale.
• 1900: The story of the Alphabet. Newnes, London.
• 1900: Grant Allen: a memoir.
• 1905: Animism: the seed of religion. Constable, London.
• 1916: Memories. Chapman & Hall, London.
• 1917: The Question: If a man die, shall he live again? Grant Richards, London.
• 1920: Magic in names & other things. Chapman & Hall, London.
• 1922: Occultism: two lectures.
• 1923: The ultimate guide to Brighton, England McStewart & Earnshaw, London.