Maud Karpeles

Maud Karpeles OBE, (12 November 1885 – 1 October 1976) was a British collector of folksongs and dance teacher.

Early life and education Maud Pauline Karpeles was born at Lancaster Gate in Bayswater, London, in 1885. She was the third of five children. Her father, Joseph Nicolaus Karpeles, was a German immigrant who was born in Hamburg, and naturalised as a British subject in 1881.

Volunteer work After returning to England, Karpeles was a volunteer with the Invalid Children's Aid Association. According to founder Grace Kimmins, songs and dances from "Merrie England" would help to counteract the negative influences of urbanisation. Around this time, Maud Karpeles also became a member of the Fabian Society. There, they met Cecil Sharp, who was an adjudicator at the competition, Starting in September, they audited Sharp's classes at the School of Morris Dancing in the Chelsea Polytechnic Institute.

Collaboration with Sharp

English Folk Dance Society In 1910, the Karpeles sisters formed an informal Folk Dance Club, together with a group of girls who had been practicing every week at their parents' house. Initially, she wrote his letters in longhand, but quickly learned typewriting and shorthand. In the summer of 1915, Maud Karpeles accompanied him to the United States for the first time. She was one of three British teachers assisting Sharp at a summer school he was directing in Maine.

Fieldwork in Newfoundland Sharp died in 1924, but just beforehand, he had expressed a wish to search for songs in Newfoundland. His theory predicted that the emigrants from Scotland and England would have brought folk songs with them, and that they would still be found there, if anyone cared to look.

From 1929 to 1930, Karpeles finally took up the challenge, and spent around 14 weeks collecting songs. In 1934, she published her collection Folk Songs from Newfoundland.

Later life The English Folk Dance Society (EFDS) merged with the Folk Song Society (FSS) in 1932 to become the "English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in Cecil Sharp House has her unpublished papers and diaries.