Porter, Enid

(1909-84)

   Curator of the Cambridge and Country Folk Museum, Cambridge, from 1947 to 1976, and a leading authority on that region's material culture, dialect, place-names, local history, cures, customs, tales, and beliefs. During her fieldwork she discovered two excellent Fenland informants, W. H. Barrett and Arthur Randall, from whom she collected enough tales and reminiscences to edit into five books (published under their names, not hers), important sources for the region's life and storytelling. Her own major work is Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore (1969), a 'regional study equal to the finest in earlier generations, covering University and civic customs as well as rural lore. Her Folklore of East Anglia (1974) is a smaller book, but equally well researched; she contributed numerous articles to local journals. Both her museum work and her writings are major achievements.

   ■ Carmen Blacker, in Women and Tradition, ed. Hilda Davidson and Carmen Blacker (forthcoming).