Item 602 - Manuscript draft, 'Cutting the Rainbow' by 'Antiquary' [Lilly Frazer]

Lilly Frazer was born Elizabeth (alternatively Elisabeth) Johanna Adelsdorfer on 24 Nov., 1854 or 1855, the daughter of Sigismund Adelsdorfer, a French merchant. She married Charles Baylee Grove, Captain in the merchant service on 2 August 1877, and they had two children, Lilly Mary Grove (c 1880-1919) and Charles Grenville Grove (1878-1949). Charles Baylee Grove died 15 January 1889. In April 1896, she married James George Frazer, social anthropologist and classical scholar. At that time, Lilly was a French teacher who wrote French schoolbooks and plays and promoted the use of phonographic records in the teaching of languages. Her publications include 'Scenes of Familiar Life' (1896), 'Berthes aux grands pieds' (1902), 'Histoire de Monsieur Blanc' (1910), and 'Je sais un conte' (1911). She was working on a book on the history of dance when she met Frazer ('Dancing', 1895), and later wrote a book for children based on 'The Golden Bough', entitled 'Leaves from the Golden Bough' (1924). She also translated one of his books, 'Adonis' in 1921, and several works by French scholars, including Albert Houtin’s 'A Short History of Christianity' (1926) and François Aulard’s 'Christianity and the French Revolution' (1927). In the 1930s she branched into other areas, commissioning an operetta based on her story 'The Singing Wood', and co-authoring a book with James, a small book entitled 'Pasha the Pom: the Story of a Little Dog' (1937).

Lilly had a highly developed business sense, and stepped into the role of James’s manager and press agent, promoting him in Britain as well as the continent, where she arranged for his works to be translated into French. James received many honours, including a knighthood in 1914. After James suffered a dramatic loss of sight while giving a lecture in May 1931, he and Lilly travelled to Switzerland for a number of eye operations, which were temporarily helpful, but failed to stave off an eventual near blindness. Secretaries were employed as James revised and added to earlier works in the later 1930s. Lilly became increasingly deaf herself. In the late 1930s, they moved from accommodation in London to 7 Causewayside in Cambridge, where they died within a day of each other: James on 7 May and Lilly on 8 May, 1941.