author
Wilfrid D. (Wilfrid Dyson) Hambly
1886–1962
An anthropologist and museum curator with a wide-ranging curiosity, he wrote about African societies, tattooing, education, and folklore for both specialist and general readers. His books reflect the early 20th century drive to document cultures around the world, and they remain of historical interest today.
2 Audiobooks
The Native Races of British North America
by Wilfrid D. (Wilfrid Dyson) Hambly
The Native Races of East Africa
by Wilfrid D. (Wilfrid Dyson) Hambly
About the author
Born in Clayton, Yorkshire, in 1886, Wilfrid Dyson Hambly became a British-born ethnologist and anthropologist whose career was closely tied to museum work and research. Sources identify him with the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, where he served in African ethnology and led a 1929 Africa expedition sponsored by Frederick H. Rawson.
Hambly wrote extensively across anthropology and related subjects. Library and archival records connect him with works including The History of Tattooing, Culture Areas of Nigeria, The Ovimbundu of Angola, and Origins of Education among Primitive Peoples. His bibliography shows both scholarly studies and books aimed at broader readers, including writing on folklore and non-Western societies.
He died in Chicago in 1962. Because much of his work was produced within the language and assumptions of his era, modern readers may approach it as both a source of information and a record of how anthropology was practiced and written in the first half of the 20th century.