Charles Godfrey Leland's Biography(Books)(Photos)

Charles Godfrey Leland (August 15, 1824 – march 20, 1903)
is a forgotten American scholar, born in Philadelphia,

being sufficiently scholarly and scientific. Also he was
regarded as being too far ahead of their mechanistic world.

Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and in
Europe.

Nevertheless, he continued to delve into the occult. The
income from “Hans Breitman’s” sales and the

Leland worked in journalism, travelled extensively, and

inheritance from his father enabled him to pursue his
studies independently. He studied Algonquin Indians’

became interested in folklore and folk linguistics,
publishing books and articles on American and European

stories and myths, was a great folklorist and was a social
anthropologist 75 years before Margaret Mead did her great

languages and folk traditions. By the end of his life
shortly after the turn of the century, Leland had worked in

work.

a wide variety of trades, achieved recognition as the author
of the comic Hans Breitmann’s Ballads, fought in two

Leland did and impressive amount of fieldwork. He lived with
Indian groups for months at a time and recorded their

conflicts, and had written what was to become a primary
source text for Neopaganism half a century later, Aradia, or

stories scientifically by checking with various sources. He
also studied the myths of the Eskimos, a number of Finnish

the Gospel of the Witches.

and Laplander groups and various Mongoloid peoples. He found
parallels between the themes in various Norse Eddas and

His father was a successful merchant who knew and worked
with the important people of Philadelphia in the late 18th

North American Indian myths and, inasmuch as the Algonquin
Indians’ stories could be related to the Norse legends, he

and early 19th centuries. At age 20 months, Charles had a
serious “meningitis-like” illness. Later in life, he

developed a theory of diffusion of themes. He postulated
that certain themes had spread form Greenland down to Canada

credited the brain damage from that illness as being a
significant factor I his nervousness, idealism, romanticism,

and Northeastern America. Leland’s studies, including the
post-graduate work in Germany, led him to the conviction

poetic ability and attraction to the occult and mysticism.
Other significant early influences included his Dutch

that the US did not have a meaningful, legitimate folk
ethos. He maintained that the American Indians understood

nurse’s being a sorceress who “cast several spells” on
him when he was young. Throughout his boyhood and developing

nature and spirituality better than even Emerson or Whitman.
His works preceded Joseph Campbell’s famous publications

years Charles’ interest in the occult increased and, later
in life, he worked with gypsies I England and Southeastern

by about 100 years.

Europe. At age six, he memorized Prospero’s speeches from
Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and also became a

Charles Godfrey Leland then traveled in Europe to study the
gypsies in England and to develop and publish a definitive

voracious reader.

dictionary of the gypsy language. He looked at the
gypsies’ origins in India and, to achieve the necessary

Charles Godfrey Leland’s youth was almost idyllic. He went
to a series of private schools in Philadelphia and during

understanding, identified their language (Shelta, the tongue
used by itinerant English tinkers while they were “on the

road”). He considered it to be an example of ancient
Celtic language and wrote a dictionary of it. He traveled

number of illnesses, he grew to be a six-foot adult who was
vigorous in adult life except for occasional episodes of

throughout Eastern Europe with various gypsy groups and
finally went to Florence, Italy, where he stayed for a

depression. After graduation from Princeton, his father sent
him to Heidelberg, Munich and Paris for post-graduate study.

number of years to study the witches (stregas) of Northern
Italy. During the next 20 busy years, Leland translated 20

When he returned to the US, he worked as a journalist and as
an editor for a number of years and even apprenticed in a

volumes for German into English, including the complete
works of the poet, Heinrich Heine.

law firm. During those years, he wrote hundreds of essays,
reviews and articles for the major periodicals of the time,

It is unfortunate that Charles Godfrey Leland has been

including Vanity Fair, Graham’s Magazine, and the
Knickerbocker Magazine. In the 1850’s and during the Civil

forgotten in many of the academic centers of America. He was
truly a fascinating person. Although in his own time, he was

war he had strong pro-Union sentiments.

thought not to be “scientific enough,” as this brief
survey reveals, he was 19th century Victorian genius who

One of his poetic figures was the fictional “Hans
Breitman,” whose German-English dialect popularized Leland

made contributions to anthropology, the history of medicine
and literature. The time has come for him and his work not

so that he became a sought-after, prosperous writer.
However, he was ostracized by the academic community as not

just to be recalled, but for him to take his rightful place
in American scholarship.