Charles Godfrey Leland

Charles Godfrey Leland , pseud. Hans Breitmann , 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.

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

Leland, Charles Godfrey (1824–1903), Philadelphia author and editor, whose early teachers included Bronson Alcott, attended the College of New Jersey and universities in Heidelberg and Munich. His first book, Meister Karl's Sketch‐Book (1855), was halfway between the Irving tradition and his own dialect humor, which asserted itself in Hans Breitmann's Barty, published in Graham's Magazine (May 1857) during his brief editorship. He continued to write amusing dialect poems, which were finally gathered in Hans Breitmann's Ballads (1914). He edited Vanity Fair (1860–61), The Knickerbocker Magazine (1861), and a strong Union paper, The Continental Monthly (1862–63). His many activities included the study of gypsy lore and language, about which he wrote; Roman historical and literary scholarship; the study of Indian legends; mystic and occult knowledge; and the introduction of industrial education in public schools.