author
Gordon Hall Gerould
1877–1953
A scholar of medieval literature and folklore, he spent decades teaching at Princeton while writing books that helped trace how stories, legends, and ballads travel across cultures and centuries. His work blends patient research with a real curiosity about the way old tales stay alive.
1 Audiobook
The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story
by Gordon Hall Gerould
About the author
Born in Goffstown, New Hampshire, in 1877, Gordon Hall Gerould became an American philologist, folklorist, and literary scholar best known for his work on medieval English literature and traditional narrative. He studied at Dartmouth and later at Oxford, then taught at Bryn Mawr before building a long career at Princeton University, where he served on the English faculty for more than forty years.
Gerould wrote both scholarship and fiction, but he is chiefly remembered for studies that brought together literary history and folklore. Among his best-known books are The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story, Saints' Legends, and The Ballad of Tradition, works that reflect his interest in how stories are preserved, reshaped, and passed on over time.
He was married in 1910 to writer Katharine Fullerton Gerould. Gerould died on April 10, 1953, in Asheville, North Carolina, after a long illness. Even now, his work stands out for making old texts and folk traditions feel connected to the larger life of storytelling.