Folklorist with a particular interest in Mormon folklore, cowboy and Western songs, and
material culture. The grandson of Mormon pioneers, Fife grew up in Utah and Idaho. His
academic training was in French language and literature at Stanford and Harvard
Universities, and most of his professional career was in this field. A student of Aurelio
M. Espinosa, he became interested in folklore and pursued the study of it as an avocation,
eventually becoming an acknowledged expert.
Fife held academic appointments at Occidental College, Indiana University, with die
U.S. Air Force (as a historian) and the U.S. Department of Education, at UCLA, and at
Utah State University. He received a Fulbright grant to lecture on American folk music in
France in 1950, a Guggenheim Fellowship for the study of cowboy and Western songs in
1959, a National Endowment for the Humanities senior Award in 1971, and a
Distinguished Service Award at Utah State University (USU) in 1976. Fife was a Fellow
of the American Folklore Society and of the Utah State Historical Society, elected to both
in 1968.
In 1972 he established the Fife Folklore Archive at USU with the gift of his private
library, his field notes on Mormon folklore and on cowboy and Western songs, his
acetate and tape recordings, and his slides and photographs of material culture—primarily
fences, hay derricks, stone houses, mailboxes, and gravestones. Many of his early
recordings of folk music and lore are deposited in the Library of Congress in
Washington, DC. In addition to several published books, often written in collaboration
with his wife, Alta S. Fife, he wrote many articles for folklore and historical journals.
Alta S.Fife
References
Delarue, Paul. 1956. The Borzoi Book of French Folk Tales, trans. Austin E.Fife. New York: Alfred
Knopf.
Fife, Austin E. 1988. Exploring Western Americana. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press.
Fife, Austin E., and Alta S.Fife. [1956] 1980. Saints of Sage and Saddle. Salt Lake City: University
of Utah Press.
——. 1969. Cowboy and Western Songs. New York: Clarkson N.Potter.
——. 1970a. Ballads of the Great West. Palo Alto, CA: American West.
——. 1970b. Heaven on Horsehack. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Thorp, N.Howard. 1966. Songs of the Cowboys. Variants, Commentary, Notes and Lexicon by
Austin E. and Alta S.Fife. New York: Clarkson N.Potter.