Maria Leach

Maria Leach (April 30, 1892 – May 22, 1977) was an American writer and editor of books on folklores of the world. A noted scholar, she compiled and edited a major reference work on folklore and was the author or editor of thirteen books for adults, young people, and children. Her father was a native of Nova Scotia, one of Canada's three Maritime provinces. Born in Barrington, in Shelburne County, he was a descendant of the venerable family called Doane (an Anglicized form of a Gaelic name common in southern Ireland since the 1500s). In Nova Scotia he had connections to seafaring through his own father, a ship's captain. In the late 1870s or early 1880s, Benjamin Doane and his wife Mary, a native of South Carolina and an unreconstructed Rebel, moved to New York and established a home in Manhattan, where they lived for some years and raised their children.

Alice-Mary Doane spent her youth and received her early education in New York City. Upon graduation from high school she went to Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, whose curriculum was shaped by the perspective of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). She then went on to study for a master's degree in anthropology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. There she met MacEdward Leach, a student of medieval literature and philology with a strong interest in folklore. His fascination with the oral tradition of medieval folk tales was shared by Alice-Mary, who by then was known as Maria (pronounced "Ma-RYE-uh" in the British fashion), which she had adopted as a pen name. After MacEdward Leach earned a bachelor's degree in 1916 and completed his military service in World War I, he and Maria married in 1917 and moved to Baltimore, where both of them pursued graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University.

MacEdward Leach earned a master's degree at Johns Hopkins that same year, 1917. Maria continued her studies toward a doctorate in folklore in 1918–19.

Maria Leach also continued to work in the burgeoning field of folklore. Having resettled in Manhattan, in Greenwich Village, she worked in the New York offices of Funk & Wagnalls as a dictionary editor. There, after her amicable divorce from MacEdward Leach in the mid-1940s, she compiled and edited the major reference work on folklore, mythology, and legend for which she is best known. From 1953 to 1958 she was a textbook editor at McGraw-Hill Book Company. During this time, in 1954, she wrote the first of what would become a substantial list of published works. In the late 1950s, she decided to retire and move to Nova Scotia. Her connection to the people of Cape Breton led her to establish residence in Shelburne County, at first in Barrington, in the Doane's family home, and then, finally, at Coffinscroft. A folklorist of international renown, she was still actively engaged in writing at the time of her death in 1977.

Published works

Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend, 2 vols., edited by Leach (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1949); reissued in a one-volume, unabridged edition by Harper & Row in 1972 – encyclopedic The Turnspit Dog, illustrated by Winifred Bromhall (New York: Aladdin Books, 1952) The Soup Stone: The Magic of Familiar Things, with decorations by Mamie Hannon (Funk & Wagnalls, 1954) The Beginning: Creation Myths around the World, illus. Jan Bell Fairservis (Funk & Wagnalls, 1956) The Rainbow Book of American Folk Tales and Legends, illus. Marc Simont (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1958) The Thing at the Foot of the Bed and Other Scary Tales, illus. Kurt Werth (World, 1959; London: Collins, 1959); reissued by Philomel Books in 1982 God Had a Dog: Folklore of the Dog (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1961) Noodles, Nitwits, and Numbskulls, illus. Kurt Werth (World, 1961) The Luck Book, illus. Kurt Werth (World, 1964) How the People Sang the Mountain Up: How and Why Stories, illus. Glen Rounds (New York: Viking, 1967) Riddle Me, Riddle Me, Ree, illus. William Wiesner (Viking, 1970); reissued by Puffin Books in 1977 Whistle in the Graveyard: Folktales to Chill Your Bones, illus. Ken Rinciari (Viking, 1974); reissued by Penguin Books in 1982 The Lion Sneezed: Folktales and Myths of the Cat, illus. Helen Siegel (New York: Crowell, 1977) The Importance of Being a Wit: The Insults of Oscar Wilde, compiled by Leach (New York: Carrol & Graf, 1997; London: Michael O'Mara, 1997) – published posthumously