Author Leland Charles Godfrey

ed candles, money and salt to ensure a long life as a "scholar and a wizard", a fact which Leland's biographers have commented upon as foreshadowing his interest in folk traditions and magic.[2] Charles Godfrey Leland's early education was in the United States, and he attended college at Princeton University. During his schooling, Leland studied languages, wrote poetry, and pursued a variety of other interests, including hermeticism, Neo-Platonism, and the writings of Rabelais and Villon.[3] After college, Leland continued his studies in Heidelberg and Munich. In 1848 Leland attended the Sorbonne, and was involved in the Revolutions of 1848 in France, fighting at constructed barricades against the King's soldiers as a captain in the revolution.[4] Leland returned to America after the money given to him by his father for travel had run out, and passed the bar in Pennsylvania. Instead of practicing law, he instead began a career in journalism. As a journalist, Leland wrote for The Illustrated News in New York, the Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia and eventually took on editorial duties for Graham's Magazine, and the Philadelphia Press. In 1856 Leland married Eliza Bella "Isabel" Fisher.[4] Leland was also an editor for the Continental Monthly, a pro-Union Army publication. He enlisted in the Union Army in 1863, and fought at the Battle of Gettysburg. Leland coined the term "emancipation" as an alternative to "abolition" to refer to the anti-slavery position.[4] Leland returned to Europe in 1869, and travelled widely, eventually settling in London. In his travels, he made a study of the Gypsies, on whom he wrote more than one book. Leland began to publish a number of books on ethnography, folklore and language. His fame during his lifetime rested chiefly on his comic Hans Breitmann’s Ballads (1871), written in a combination of broken English and German (not to be confused, as it often has been, with Pennsylvania German).[5] His writings on Algonquian and gypsy culture were part of the contemporary interest in pagan and Aryan traditions. He erroneously claimed to have discovered 'the fifth Celtic tongue': the form of Cant, spoken among Irish Travellers. He named it Shelta. Leland became president of the English Gypsy-Lore Society in 1888. Eleven years later Godfrey produced Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, reportedly containing the traditional beliefs of Italian witchcraft as conveyed to Leland in a manuscript provided by a woman named Maddalena, who Leland refers to as his "witch informant."[6] In recent times his writings on pagan and Aryan traditions have eclipsed the now largely forgotten Breitmann ballads, influencing the development of Wicca and modern Neo-paganism. The most influential of these books is Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. Aradia's accuracy has been disputed,[7] and used by others as a study of witch lore in 19th century Italy.[8] Leland was also a pioneer of art and design education, becoming an important influence on the Arts and Crafts movement. In his memoirs he wrote, "The story of what is to me by far the most interesting period of my life remains to be written. This embraces an account of my labour for many years in introducing Industrial Art as a branch of education in schools[.]" He was involved in a series of books on industrial arts and crafts including a title he co-authored in 1876 with Thomas Bolas, entitled "Pyrography or burnt-wood etching," which was revised by Frank H Ball, G J Fowler in 1900. He was, more significantly, the founder and first director of the Public Industrial Art School of Philadelphia. This school is today known as Philadelphia University of the Arts. This originated as a school to teach crafts to disadvantaged children. It became became widely known when it was praised by Oscar Wilde. Wilde later wrote to Leland he would be "recognised and honoured as one of the great pioneers and leaders of the art of the future."[9] The Home Arts and Industries Association was founded in imitation of this initiative.[10]