Burmese Wonder Tales : Donald A. Mackenzie SIGNED Copy in Scarce Jacket BURMA

Burmese Wonder Tales

By Donald A. Mackenzie

INSCRIBED, SIGNED AND DATED BY THE AUTHOR.

Published by Blackie & Son, London and Glasgow, undated, circa 1932. Presumed first edition. The author's inscription is dated 1932. Hardback book with original dust jacket. This is a hard-to-find book with an even harder-to-find dust jacket. 207 pages. With a colour frontispiece and 8 b&w plates by Leo Bates.

CONDITION
The original dust jacket in good condition and the original price is still intact. The decorative boards and spine are in very good clean condition. All contents present including all illustrations. Very light spotting to front endpapers and to title page but all other pages free from this and are in good clean condition. No writing or names other than that of the author's inscription which is found on the front endpaper. Overall a very good copy of this scarce title.

Donald Alexander Mackenzie (24 July 1873 – 2 March 1936) was a Scottish journalist and folklorist and a prolific writer on religion, mythology and anthropology in the early 20th century.

Mackenzie was born in Cromarty, son of A.H. Mackenzie and Isobel Mackay. He became a journalist in Glasgow and in 1903 moved to Dingwall as owner and editor of The North Star. His next move, in 1910, was to the People's Journal in Dundee. From 1916 he represented the Glasgow paper, The Bulletin, in Edinburgh. As well as writing books, articles and poems, he often gave lectures, and also broadcast talks on Celtic mythology. He was the friend of many specialist authorities in his areas of interest. His older brother was William Mackay Mackenzie, Secretary of the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland between 1913 and 1935. He died in Edinburgh on 2 March 1936 and was buried in Cromarty.

In one of his key works, Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe (1917), Mackenzie argued that across Europe during Neolithic times, pre-Indo-European societies were matriarchal and woman-centered (gynocentric), where goddesses were venerated but that the Bronze Age Indo-European patriarchal ("androcratic") culture supplanted it. Mackenzie's matristic theories were notably influential to Marija Gimbutas. He also believed that the Neolithic matriarchy was as far north as Scotland, writing an article in the Celtic Review called "A Highland Goddess" attempting to trace the very early presence of goddess worship.

(Loc: Blue shelves; nearest desk; 3rd from bottom shelf )