The Working Papers of Iona and Peter Opie

This essay describes the archival collection of Iona and Peter Opie, the English folklorists who published a series of classic books on children’s folklore in the second half of the twentieth century. It focuses particularly on their working papers at the Bodleian Libraries, which contain the responses of schoolchildren in the United Kingdom to the Opies’ questionnaires and the Opies’ research notes for their books.