Introduction to Lore and Language Special Issue - Folklore Studies: Past, Present - and Future?

The international anniversary conference, Folklore 150, hosted in Sheffield by the Institute for Folklore Studies in Britain and Canada, July 24th-26th, 1996, was conceived of as, and proved to have, in effect, an outreach to other countries, being a "celebration of 150 years of folklore studies on both sides of the Atlantic"... The papers in this special double issue of 'Lore and Language' have been arranged in a sequence which follows a more or less chronological ordering of subjects after the first scene-setting paper by Gillian Bennett, which focuses admirably on the heart of this commemorative conference, namely the remarkable sequence of events and scholarly activities which flowed from the letter to the Athenaeum from W. J. Thorns in August 1846, and the early formative style and leading personalities of the Folklore Society.