Background
Charles Godfrey Leland was born in Philadelphia, the eldest child of a commission merchant, Charles Leland, and his wife, Charlotte (Godfrey). On his father's side he was of Massachusetts, and on his mother's of Rhode Island stock.
(This book contains many vivid and authentic tales of anci...)
This book contains many vivid and authentic tales of ancient Italian folklore, originating mainly in the Tuscany region. First published in 1892, Charles Godfrey Leland's chronicle lays bare the traditions, poetry and stories told among the peoples of Ancient and Medieval Italy. By profession, the author was not a cultural anthropologist or a classical scholar, but a journalist with a history of working with everyday newspapers in the 19th century United States. At the time a revived interest in ancient pagan and folklore traditions led Leland to travel to Europe, where he branched out to researching and transcribing the continent's myths and legends into books. The tone we witness here is neither dry nor particularly rigorous in the academic sense: Leland's intention was never to conform to the precise scholarly principles of research and sources, but instead to present the pagan folklore to the popular audience in a manner easily enjoyed and digested by the reader. The price of Leland's colorful approach was his loss of authority in academic circles: something to which he paid little mind. The stories in this lengthy volume approach the subject in an embracing manner: tales of witchcraft, of pagan Gods (including the prominent Goddess of Truffles revered by rural communities) and various cautionary tales of morality among those included in this book. There are many allusions to festivals and pagan offerings, and the pastoral Italian traditions surrounding food and drink. Frequent quotations of poetry and occasional imagery of the warm and rugged Italian countryside also populate this book. Something of an underappreciated lost classic, Leland's exhaustive efforts to shed light onto Italy's enormous folk traditions are offered to the reader anew.
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(This scholarly and classic work by folklorist and linguis...)
This scholarly and classic work by folklorist and linguist Charles Godfrey Leland (author of Aradia: Gospel of the Witches) which not only illustrates examples of Gypsy witchcraft in the 19th Century, it also explores the far flung roots of Gypsy culture and folk lore, as it has been incorporated into the very fabric of European and Western culture. Leland not only explores the roots of Gypsy magic and divination in its primal source of India, he also compares the myths and magic of the "Romany" to the myths and magic of cultures as far flung as the Native Americans and the Siberian Eskimo, to illustrate the primal nature and common human thread of magical thought and practice.
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(The result of my researches has been the collection of su...)
The result of my researches has been the collection of such a number of magic formulas, tales, and poems as would have exceeded reasonable limits, both as to pages and my readers' patience, had I published them all. What I have given will, I believe, be of very great interest to all students of classical lore of every kind, and extremely curious as illustrating the survival to the present day of "the Gods in Exile ".
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(The Mystic Will by Charles Godfrey Leland is a self help ...)
The Mystic Will by Charles Godfrey Leland is a self help classic that describes a Method of Developing and Strengthening the Faculties of the Mind, through the Awakened Will, by a Simple, Scientific Process Possible to Any Person of Ordinary Intelligence
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( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
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(If Gerald Brosseau Gardner is the father of the religion ...)
If Gerald Brosseau Gardner is the father of the religion that calls itself Wicca, then Charles Godfrey Leland is the grandfather of Witchcraft as a religion in the English-speaking world, and his small book, Aradia, is that religion's birth-announcement. It is the first work in English in which Witchcraft is portrayed as an underground old religion, surviving in secret from ancient Pagan times. Until now Aradia has been a work more often cited than read. Its first edition (1899) garnered only one review, and sank from sight like a stone cast into murky waters/ it sold poorly and is now a rare book. By chance a copy fell into the hands of Theda Kenyon, who devoted a few pages to it in her sensational Witches Still Live (1929), thereby calling it to the attention of many readers. By the 1950s Doreen Valiente had read Aradia, and she incorporated some of its most beautiful passages into the Wiccan rituals that she wrote. In the '60s and '70s it was reprinted four times, but always from a defective copy of the first edition that had lost its last page. Only in the '90s did another reprint finally restore the missing page. Aradia has always been a controversial work, among Witches and scholars alike. Scholars have questioned whether it may be a fiction or a forgery by Leland or by his principal informant, Maddalena (Margherita Taludi). Witches have objected to it on theological and ethical grounds, since some of the myths that it tells are about Lucifer and Cain as well as Diana and Aradia, some of its spells work by threatening or coercing the Deities and spirits, and in its revolutionary fervor it does not shrink even from teaching that the poor and downtrodden should use poisons to destroy their feudal overlords. Despite all that, it remains a beautiful and compelling work. This edition has brought the format and typography up to date, while keeping the text unchanged. A modern reader will undoubtedly find this new edition of Aradia much easier to read than the original or any of its facsimile reprints.
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(This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 18...)
This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1883 edition by Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston.
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(Excerpt from Flaxius: Leaves From the Life of an Immortal...)
Excerpt from Flaxius: Leaves From the Life of an Immortal I beg the reader to pardon this fond disquisition, but it is natural for an author to think fondly of his first work, as it is for a mother to do the same by her first-born; and I was the more influenced to do so by its having been in the same genre as the present volume. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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(The Algonquin Legends of New England by Charles G. Leland...)
The Algonquin Legends of New England by Charles G. Leland 1898. About the Author Charles Godfrey Leland (1824 - 1903) Charles Godfrey Leland (August 15, 1824 - March 20, 1903) was an American humorist and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and educated at Princeton University, and in Europe. Leland worked in journalism, travelled extensively, and became interested in folklore and folk linguistics, publishing books and articles on American and European languages and folk traditions. By the end of his life shortly after the turn of the century, Leland had worked in a wide variety of trades, achieved recognition as an author of the comedic Hans Breitmann Ballads, fought in two conflicts, and had written what was to become a primary source text for Neopaganism half a century later, Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. (Quote from wikipedia.org) About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology. http://www.forgottenbooks.org
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Charles Godfrey Leland was born in Philadelphia, the eldest child of a commission merchant, Charles Leland, and his wife, Charlotte (Godfrey). On his father's side he was of Massachusetts, and on his mother's of Rhode Island stock.
He received his early schooling at Jamaica Plain, Massachussets, and in Philadelphia, where Bronson Alcott was one of his teachers. At the age of nine Leland was already reading with the voracity of Macaulay. From 1841 to 1845 he attended the College of New Jersey, where "piety and mathematics rated extravagantly high in the course, " but despite serious deficiencies in those subjects he not only graduated in due course but won the regard of his teachers, especially of Albert Baldwin Dod, of whom he has left a beautiful account in his Memoirs (1893). After graduating, he went to Germany, by way of Italy, and studied for two years at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich. By "incredible labour" he learned the German language, but learned it thoroughly, and meanwhile changed from an overgrown, delicate boy into a burly, genial giant of a man, with a beard like Charlemagne's and a Gargantuan appetite for food, drink, and tobacco. Germany he learned to love as he loved no other country but his own. In 1848 he migrated from the University of Munich to the Sorbonne in Paris where he continued his studies.
While in France Leland got involved in the revolution, fighting at constructed barricades against the King's soldiers as a captain in the revolution. Returning to Philadelphia, he studied law in the office of John Cadwalader, was called to the bar, but soon turned to journalism.
For the next twenty-one years journalism and authorship, varied by forays into politics, war, and western exploration, were his vocation. In 1849 he began contributing articles on art to John Sartain's Union Magazine. A little later he became Rufus Griswold's assistant on P. T. Barnum's Illustrated News in New York. He next joined the staff of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. By this time the growing prosperity of his father made him only partially dependent on his writing. Meanwhile he had published his first book, Meister Karl's Sketch-Book (1855), a volume of essays and sketches in the tradition established by Washington Irving but quite Lelandesque in style and flavor. He was also engaged at this time in translating Heine and in writing for various magazines.
He was a master of literary journalism, always fluent, entertaining, good-humored, and well informed. He could acquit himself well on almost any subject, in prose or verse. From January to May 1857 he edited Graham's Magazine and contributed to the May number his famous "Hans Breitmann's Barty, " the popularity of which has only been equaled by Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee. " He wrote other Breitmann ballads, which were published as pamphlets and were widely read both in America and England. They were finally collected in The Breitmann Ballads (London, 1871) and Hans Breitmann's Ballads (Cambridge, Massachussets, 1914). Many of them are merely humorous, but the best of them, in their wealth of parody and literary allusion, their rich humor, metrical skill, and poetic feeling, are unique creations of the comic spirit. Though Leland himself enjoyed them, he never realized that they are the best proof of his genius.
In 1862 he became editor of the Continental Monthly in Boston, an organ of the Union cause and, according to his own story, coined the term emancipation as a substitute for the disreputable abolition. In 1863 he enlisted in a Philadelphia artillery company and saw, rather than participated in, the battle of Gettysburg. There followed a period of travel in Tennessee and the West and then, in 1866, he became managing editor of John W. Forney's Philadelphia Press.
His father having died, Leland gave up active newspaper work and went to Europe in 1869, settling finally in London, where he remained until 1879. By this time he had an international reputation as a humorist, poet, and essayist; he was socially one of the most agreeable of men; and in consequence he became very popular. He and Walter Besant founded the short-lived but famous Rabelais Club. Leland devoted himself to the study of gipsy lore and language and became a master of Romany, which he delighted in speaking. Becoming interested in the industrial arts, characteristically he began to think them of the utmost importance in education and returned to Philadelphia in order to introduce them into the public schools. He gave time and money without stint to the project, wrote a whole series of textbooks, and worked indefatigably. He achieved a certain measure of success, but in 1884, somewhat weary of the subject, he returned to London.
During all these years he was publishing a number of books, the more important being: The Music Lesson of Confucius (1872); The English Gipsies (1873); The Gypsies (1882); The Algonquin Legends (1884); A Dictionary of Slang (1889, 1897), with Albert Barrere; Etruscan-Roman Remains in Popular Tradition (1892); Memoirs (1893); Legends of Florence (1895 - 1896); and The Unpublished Legends of Virgil (1901). He prided himself especially on the discovery of Shelta, a dialect, of ancient descent, spoken by some Irish and Welsh gypsies. He had an extraordinary faculty for languages, and to the end of his life, was a student of anything mysterious or occult. During his later years he lived much in Florence and never ventured further north than Homburg, his favorite among the health resorts of Germany. He died in Florence and was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia.
(This scholarly and classic work by folklorist and linguis...)
(Excerpt from Flaxius: Leaves From the Life of an Immortal...)
(The Mystic Will by Charles Godfrey Leland is a self help ...)
(If Gerald Brosseau Gardner is the father of the religion ...)
(The result of my researches has been the collection of su...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
(This book contains many vivid and authentic tales of anci...)
(This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 18...)
(The Algonquin Legends of New England by Charles G. Leland...)
On January 17, 1856, Leland married Eliza Bella Fisher, daughter of Rodney Fisher of Philadelphia.