Roberts was born in Floyd County, Kentucky and graduated from Berea College in 1939. In 1945 he returned to teach English at the Berea Foundation School where he involved his students in collecting folktales, ballads, magic tales, and other stories from their families. In 1953 he completed his dissertation, South From Hell-fer-Sartin: Kentucky Mountain Folktales, based on a large number of folk narratives collected in Leslie and Perry counties. He went on to teach at Union College and Morehead State College in Kentucky, and West Virginia Wesleyan before moving to Pikeville College in 1968, where he taught English, folklore, and creative writing. There he continued to be deeply involved in research and publication of eastern Kentucky folklore and history. His other major works include, Up Cutshin and Down Greasy: Folkways of a Kentucky Mountain Family (1959), Tales and Songs of the Couch Family (1959), Old Greasy Beard: Tales From the Cumberland Gap (1969), Sang Branch Settlers: Folksongs and Tales of a Kentucky Mountain Family (1974), and In the Pine: Selected Kentucky Folksongs (1978).
From the description of Leonard Roberts Papers 1950-1983. (Berea College). WorldCat record id: 51875991
