Charles Godfrey Leland was an American writer. He is famously known as a humorist and folklorist. His comical work, Hans Breitmann Ballads was his biggest success as an author during his life.Most of his books dealt with the traditions and languages of the people he had studied while he was traveling. He is well known today for his book "Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches" which is one of his three books on Italian folk traditions.
He was born on August 15, 1824 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Charles Leland who was a commission merchant, and Charlotte Godfrey. He went to school in the United States of America. In school he learned languages and writing poems. He attended college at Princeton University and after that he studied in Heidelberg and Munich. He worked as a journalist and traveled a lot. When he was a journalist, he wrote for The Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia and for The Illustrated News in New York before taking editorial duties of the Graham's Magazine, and the Philadelphia Press. Leland married Eliza Bella Fisher in the year 1856.
He got enlisted in the Union army and he fought at the Battle of Gettysburg. He returned to Europe in 1869 and eventually settled in London. Through his travels, he studied the life style of Gypsies and in later times he wrote more than one book on them. He began to publish works on ethnography and folklore. His comic book "Hans Breitmann Ballads" published in 1871 brought him immense fame. He wrote books on Algonquian and gypsy culture.
He became the president of the English Gypsy-Lore Society in the year 1888. After eleven years, he wrote Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches which contain the traditional beliefs of Italian witchcraft.
He co-authored many books on industrial arts and the most important one of them is Pyrography or burnt-wood etching which he co-authored with Thomas Bolas in the year 1876. He was the founder and the first director of the Public Industrial Art School in Philadelphia. This school is now commonly known as Philadelphia University of the Arts.
His writings on pagan and Aryan traditions influenced the the development of Wicca and modern Neo-paganism in more recent times. His writings were also a great inspiration on the Arts and Crafts movement. He had founded a crafts school to teach crafts to disabled students in Philadelphia. This school was widely praised by the very famous poet Oscar Wilde.
