Margaret Goldsmith (Margaret Leland) by Lucia MoholyMargaret Leland Goldsmith (1894–1971) was an American journalist, historical novelist and translator who lived and worked primarily in England. She translated Erich Kästner's Emil and the Detectives for the first UK edition.[1]

Goldsmith spent some of her childhood in Germany, where she attended school and learned to speak German fluently. She then studied at Illinois Woman's College in Jacksonville, Illinois and gained an MA from the University of Illinois. During World War I she was on the staff of the war trade board under Bernard Baruch. She then worked for the national chamber of commerce in Washington and the international chamber of commerce in Paris,[2] helping Wesley Clair Mitchell with his 1919 report on international price comparisons.[3] Returning to Berlin as a research assistant in the office of the commercial attache of the American Embassy,[4] she became in 1923 one of the first women to be appointed an assistant trade commissioner, resigning the post in 1925.[5] In 1926 she married Frederick Voigt, the Manchester Guardian 's diplomatic correspondent in Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s.[6] While living in Berlin she worked as an agent representing English-speaking authors. In spring 1928 she had a short affair in Berlin with Vita Sackville-West.[7] She divorced Voigt in 1935.

Goldsmith was a friend of Katharine Burdekin, helping her over depression in 1938 by providing her with research notes on Marie Antoinette. The outcome was a historical novel, Venus in Scorpio, co-authored by Goldsmith and Burdekin (as 'Murray Constantine').[6]


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