author
Thomas Lambert Barlow
1831–1910
A long-time British official in colonial India, he helped preserve local storytelling in a book that gathers folk tales from the Indus region. His work offers a rare, readable glimpse of how oral tradition was being recorded in the early 1900s.
1 Audiobook
Oral Tradition from the Indus Comprised in Tales to Which Are Added Explanatory Notes
by John Frederick Adolphus McNair, Thomas Lambert Barlow
About the author
Thomas Lambert Barlow was a British writer best known for co-authoring Oral Tradition from the Indus with J. F. A. McNair. The book collects tales from the Indus region and adds explanatory notes, presenting folklore and everyday cultural detail in a form meant for English-language readers.
The original publication identifies him as the late Superintendent, Chief Salt-range, India, and a contemporary introduction says he had lived in that part of the country for more than thirty years while serving in the Salt Revenue Department. That long experience seems to have shaped the book's close interest in local custom, speech, and storytelling.
Very little biographical information about him is easy to confirm from reliable online sources beyond his connection to India and this book. Even so, Oral Tradition from the Indus gives him a distinct place among writers who helped document regional oral tradition at a time when much of it was still being passed from voice to voice rather than through print.