Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Charles Godfrey LELAND
LELAND, Charles Godfrey, author, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., Aug. 15, 1824; son of Charles and Charlotte Frost (Godfrey) Leland; grandson of Oliver and Abigail (Perry) Leland. and a descendant of Hopestill Leland (born 1580 in Yorkshire, England), who settled in Weymouth, Mass., in 1623; and of Gen. Edward Godfrey, the first governor of Maine, 1628; both Episcopalian royalists. Charles Godfrey Leland contributed verses to periodicals as early as 1838. He attended private schools in Philadelphia and Boston, Mass., and was graduated at the College of New Jersey in 1845. He pursued a post-graduate course in the universities of Heidelberg and Munich, and attended lectures at the Sorbonne and the College Louis-le-Grand, Paris, 1847-48. He took an active part as captain of barricades in 1848; was among the first to enter the Tuileries when taken, and was one of the Americans in Paris selected to congratulate the Provisional government of France, established by the Revolutionists in February, 1848. He studied law in the office of John Cadwalader in Philadelphia; was admitted to the bar in 1851, and practised law in that city, 1851-53. He was editor of the Illustrated News, New York city, 1853-55; assistant editor of the Evening Bulletin, Philadelphia, 1855-58, and editor of Vanity Fair, 1858-61. In 1861 he contributed as editor articles to the Knickerbocker Magazine of New York, supporting the Union policy. He also established the Continental Magazine at Boston, Mass., and served as its editor while co-proprietor, [p.398] 1861-62, for the sole purpose of advancing the emancipation of the slaves. The degree of A.M. conferred on him by Harvard university in 1867 was specified to be "for political services rendered to his country during the civil war." In 1865 he travelled through Kentucky, Tennessee and western Virginia in the interest of coal and petroleum speculations. He was managing editor of the Philadelphia Press, 1866-69, and engaged in literary work in London, England, 1869-80. He established with Mrs. R. Jebb in 1880 the subsequently widely extended British Home Arts and Industries association. He was one of the original founders of the Folk-Lore congress at Paris in 1889, and discovered the "Shelta" language, spoken by Celtic tinkers and others of that class, which was afterward verified by Kuno Meyer from a manuscript 1000 years old as the famous lost artificial language of the Irish bards. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London. He was married, Jan. 17, 1856, to Elizabeth, daughter of Rodney Fisher, of Philadelphia. He was editorially employed on Appleton's and Johnson's Cyclopaedias and contributed to them about 300 articles. His system of the minor arts as a branch of school education introduced first in Philadelphia, 1880, by him personally, and subsequently through the English Home Arts association, passed to hundreds of institutions, schools and classes in Great Britain and was also adopted in Austria and especially in fifty of the chief Hungarian government schools. During his residence in Europe he travelled in Russia, Egypt, Sweden and Norway, lived fifteen years in Italy and became a member of many oriental, folk-lore, social science and other congresses, at all of which he read papers in the local language. He was officially recognized as suggester or founder of the Hungarian and Italian folk-lore societies, and he was elected president of the Gypsy Lore society of Buda-Pest, formerly of England. He is the author of: The Poetry and Mystery of Dreams (1855); Mister Karl's Sketch-Book (1855); Pictures of Travel, translated from Heinrich Heine (1856), subsequently followed by a translation of nearly all the works of Heine issued in London by Heinemann (1890); Sunshine in Thought (1862); The Book of Copperheads (1863); Mother Pitcher's Poems (1863); Legends of Birds (1864); To Kansas and Back (1866); Union versus States Rights (1863); The Music Lesson of Confucius and Other Poems (1870); Gaudeamus (1871); The Ballads of Hans Breitman (1871); France, Alsace and Lorraine (1872); Egyptian Sketch Book (1873); English Gypsies and their Language (1873); Fu Sang, or the Discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist Priests in the Fifth Century (1875); English Gypsy Songs, in collaboration with Janet Tuckey and Prof. Edward H. Palmer (1875); Johannykin and the Goblins (1876); Pidgin-Euglish Sing-Song (1876); Life of Abraham Lincoln (1879); The Minor Arts (1880); The Gypsies (1882); Industrial Education (1883); The Algonquin Legends of New England (1884); Practical Education (1888); Manual of Wood Carving (1891); Gypsy Sorcery (1891); Leather Work, Metal Work and Manual of Design (1892); Etruscan-Roman Remains (1892): Legends of Florence (1895); Memoirs (1895); Unpublished Lessons of Virgil (1899); Songs of the Sea and Lays of the Land (1899); Have You a Strong Will ? (1899); One Hundred Profitable Arts (1900); Arodis, or Gospel of the Witches (1900); and in 1901 had in preparation Lessons in Nature. He died in Florence, Italy, in 1903.
| HOME | EMAIL | SURNAMES |
Return to The Pennocks of Primitive Hall website.
The information in this database may contain errors. If you find any questionable data, or if you have something to add my findings, please feel free to e-mail me by clicking on the "E-MAIL" link above. Thank you!
Page built by Gedpage Version 2.21 ©2009 on 07 July 2020