The lives and legacies of Iona and Peter Opie

Abstract

This article outlines the biographies of Iona (1923 –) and Peter (1918–1982) Opie and describes their aims, methods and theoretical orientation with particular reference to their work on children's play and games in the third quarter of the twentieth century. The account illustrates their separate identities as well as portraying the joint working relationship they built up as a husband-and-wife team. The Opies’ reputation as pioneer researchers into children's folklore in the UK and beyond derives from their publications, which have become classics in the field and widely read by a general audience as well as by academics and professionals. The Opies’ scholarship and its reception and impact are considered here. The article also describes the Opies’ archival collection, especially their ‘working papers’ and sound recordings, and highlights the importance of evaluating the Opies’ contribution in terms of their archival legacy, as well as their published works.

Keywords:

• Iona Opie
• Peter Opie
• children's folklore
• history of play

Notes on contributor

Julia C. Bishop is a folklorist and works as a research associate. She is interested in children's play, past and present, especially continuity and change, play as performance, multimodal aspects of play and children's use of popular culture in play. Her most recent publication is Changing play: Play, media and commercial culture from the 1950s to the present day (2014), co-authored with Jackie Marsh.

Notes

1. The Opies' scholarship also covered adult traditions of custom, belief and folktales, and folklore methods (Opie & Opie, 1974; Opie & Tatem, 1989; Opie, 1953, 1954, 1957, 1963, 1964).

2. Curtis (2014) reflects on the social distance between Iona Opie's schooling and her own.

3. As discussed in the following, the Mass Observation study, which had been established in 1937, was conceived in similar terms.

4. The Opie Collection of Children's Literature contains 20,000 titles including books of stories and nursery rhymes, chapbooks, comics and magazines, and educational texts such as primers and alphabets. For more details of the collection, see http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/finding-resources/special/catalogues/opie_collection_of_childrens_literature and http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/finding-resources/special/catalogues/rare_books_named_collections/rare_books_named_collection_descriptions.

5. For more information about the formation and development of folklore studies in England, see Nicolaisen (1995), Bennett (1994, 1996) and Roper (2007).

6. These debates were sometimes mediated by their assistant, Doreen Gullen (Opie, 1989, p. 57).

7. They likewise identified with other authors and previous scholars in their field, Iona commenting ‘Most of our friends we've never met. They're either dead long ago or we've been writing to them but haven't met them' (Opie, 1988, p. 213; cf. Opie, 1989).

8. The Opie recordings are now deposited at the British Library where they form the ‘The Opie Collection of Children's Games and Songs' (shelfmark C898). Damian Webb's collection is deposited at the Pitt Rivers Museum.

9. This was a contribution to Peter's vision of a ‘dictionary, arranged on historical principles, of English traditional lore’ (Opie, 1964; cf. Opie, 1989, p. 59).

10. A recording of the talk can be accessed at http://www.opieproject.group.shef.ac.uk/opies-biography.html.

11. The plans to digitise and catalogue the collection, detailed in note 14, would in fact allow the collection materials to be ordered by these very variables.

12. Peter Opie's personal diaries will not be made available until 2032.

13. The Folklore Society Archives holds a further 24 boxes of the Opies' papers, consisting of research materials on weatherlore, superstitions, research materials on calendar customs, research materials on calendar customs, beliefs, children's games, index of counting out rhymes, personal papers and Folklore Society correspondence.

14. A project entitled ‘Childhoods and play: An Archive’ is currently seeking funding to digitise and catalogue the Opies' research papers and, subject to the necessary permission, to make them freely available online for academic, educational and community purposes. The project has been granted British Academy Research Project status (2012–2017) and is a collaboration between the University of Sheffield, the University of London Institute of Education, the Bodleian Libraries, the British Library and the Folklore Society. Further information is available on the project website (see http://www.opieproject.group.shef.ac.uk/).

15. It would make an interesting supplement to the collection to gather as many as possible of the Opies' letters to correspondents in the collection.

16. The Opies mention ‘a young coloured boy from Notting Hill’ (1969, p. 10), but the visibility of ethnic communities is generally almost completely absent in their publications.