Leland, Charles Godfrey

Leland, Charles Godfrey lē´lənd [key], pseud. Hans Breitmann häns´ brītmän [key], 1824–1903, American author, b. Philadelphia, grad. College of New Jersey (now Princeton), 1845, studied at Heidelberg, Munich, and Paris. While editor of Graham's Magazine in 1857, he printed in it his German dialect poem, Hans Breitmann's Party, which became so popular that he wrote others. In 1869 he published Hans Breitmann's Ballads. He founded and edited the Continental Monthly in Boston in 1862 to further the Union cause. After other journalistic ventures he devoted himself to traveling and studying languages and folklore. Leland wrote more than 50 books, including The English Gypsies (1873), Algonquin Legends (1884), and Legends of Florence (1895–96). In the 1880s he also successfully introduced industrial and craft arts into American schools.

See his memoirs (1893) E. R. Pennell, Charles Godfrey Leland (2 vol., 1906, repr. 1970).

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