M. A. Denham

Michael Aislabie Denham (1801 - 10 September 1859) was an English merchant and collector of folklore. A native of Gainford, County Durham, Denham was in business at Kingston-upon-Hull in the early part of his life. Ultimately he settled as a general merchant at Piercebridge, near Gainford, where he died on 10 September 1859. The Denham Tracts constitute a publication of a series of pamphlets and jottings on folklore, fifty-four in all, collected between 1846 and 1859 by Michael Aislabie Denham, a Yorkshire tradesman. Most of the original tracts were published with fifty copies (although some of them with twenty-five or even thirteen copies). The tracts were later re-edited by James Hardy for the Folklore Society and imprinted in two volumes in 1892 and 1895. It is possible that J.R.R. Tolkien took the word hobbit from the list of fairies in the Denham Tracts.