MARGARET LELAND GOLDSMITH (1894-1971) was an American journalist, historical novelist and translator who lived and worked primarily in England. One of her best known translations is popular German writer Erich Kästner’s Emil and the Detectives for the first UK edition in 1931.
She spent some of her childhood in Germany, learning German fluently, before graduating with an M.A. from the University of Illinois. During WWI she was on the staff of the war trade board and then worked for the national chamber of commerce in Washington and international chamber of commerce in Paris. She returned to Berlin as a research assistant for the American Embassy and became one of the first women to be appointed an assistant trade commissioner (1923-1925).
She married diplomatic correspondent Frederick Voigt in Berlin in 1926. The couple divorced in 1935.
She published several novels and non-fiction books, including on Frederick the Great (1929), Franz Anton Mesmer (1934), John the Baptist (1935) and Florence Nightingale (1937).
Ms. Goldsmith died in 1971.