Folklorists

  1. Vladimir Propp — Russian folklorist known for Morphology of the Folktale
  2. Jacob Grimm — folklorist, linguist, and collector of traditional tales
  3. Wilhelm Grimm — folklorist and editor of the Grimm fairy-tale collection
  4. Alan Dundes — influential American folklorist who studied legends, jokes, rituals, and cultural meaning
  5. Stith Thompson — creator of the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature
  6. Antti Aarne — developed the tale-classification system later expanded by Thompson
  7. Jan Harold Brunvand — the scholar most closely associated with modern urban legends
  8. Joseph Jacobs — collector and editor of English, Celtic, Indian, and Jewish fairy tales
  9. Andrew Lang — editor of the famous colored Fairy Books
  10. Jack Zipes — major scholar of fairy tales, folklore, and their cultural history

Urban Legends

  1. Linda Dégh — leading scholar of legend, belief, and storytelling
  2. Bill Ellis — studied contemporary legends, supernatural belief, rumor, and Satanic panics
  3. Gillian Bennett — researched supernatural legends, women’s folklore, ghosts, and contemporary belief
  4. Patricia A. Turner — studied rumor, conspiracy narratives, and folklore in African American communities
  5. Gary Alan Fine — researched rumor, contemporary legends, and small-group folklore
  6. Diane Goldstein — studied supernatural belief, health legends, internet folklore, and contemporary legend
  7. Paul Smith — prominent contemporary-legend scholar and former president of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research
  8. Sandy Hobbs — early researcher of contemporary and urban legends
  9. Gail de Vos — studied urban legends in popular culture and storytelling
  10. Robert L. Hall — folklorist known for research into urban legends and contemporary belief
  11. Timothy R. Tangherlini — folklorist known for historicized narrative

Foundational Folklore Scholars

  1. Richard Dorson — helped establish folklore as an academic discipline in the United States
  2. William Bascom — developed influential definitions and classifications of folklore
  3. Dan Ben-Amos — defined folklore as “artistic communication in small groups”
  4. Dell Hymes — studied the relationship between language, performance, and folklore
  5. Roger Abrahams — studied folk performance, storytelling, riddles, and cultural expression
  6. Barre Toelken — influential scholar of folklore, tradition, and cultural context
  7. Henry Glassie — studied material culture, folk art, architecture, and oral tradition
  8. Ruth Benedict — began her career in folklore before becoming a major anthropologist
  9. Franz Boas — anthropologist who collected and analyzed Indigenous oral traditions
  10. Elsie Clews Parsons — collected Native American, Caribbean, and African American folklore

Fairy Tales

  1. Giambattista Basile — collected some of Europe’s earliest literary versions of famous fairy tales
  2. Charles Perrault — preserved influential versions of Cinderella, Bluebeard, and Little Red Riding Hood
  3. Madame d’Aulnoy — helped popularize the literary fairy tale and the term conte de fées
  4. Alexander Afanasyev — collected hundreds of Russian folktales, including important Baba Yaga stories
  5. Peter Christen Asbjørnsen — collector of Norwegian folktales
  6. Jørgen Moe — folklorist who worked with Asbjørnsen
  7. Katharine Briggs — major scholar of British fairy traditions and folklore
  8. Maria Tatar — scholar of fairy tales, folklore, and children’s literature
  9. Marina Warner — scholar of mythology, fairy tales, and cultural storytelling
  10. Ruth Bottigheimer — fairy-tale historian known for research into printed tale traditions

Myth, Monsters, & Supernaural Traditions

  1. Sabine Baring-Gould — folklorist and author of The Book of Were-Wolves
  2. Montague Summers — controversial writer on vampires, werewolves, and witchcraft
  3. Claude Lecouteux — scholar of medieval folklore, ghosts, household spirits, and supernatural beings
  4. Carol Rose — author of encyclopedias of spirits, fairies, giants, and legendary creatures
  5. Jacqueline Simpson — scholar of British folklore, legends, ghosts, and supernatural traditions
  6. Iona Opie — collected children’s folklore, games, rhymes, and playground traditions
  7. Peter Opie — worked with Iona Opie documenting children’s folklore
  8. John Francis Campbell — collected Scottish Gaelic folktales and oral traditions
  9. Lady Gregory — collected and retold Irish mythology and folklore
  10. W. B. Yeats — poet who also collected and published Irish fairy and folk traditions
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