Eric Maple (1916–1994) was an English folklorist and author known for his studies of witchcraft and folk magic in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Essex, in particular his first-hand research into the folklore surrounding the cunning men James Murrell and George Pickingill.
[1] In the early 1950s, he discovered the scholarly field of folkloristics, and decided to use a folkloric methodology to explore the folk stories of his home county.
Totally jargon-free, they are the raw stuff of folklore, stories told by real people about still remembered (reputed) witches and their doings.
He then embarked on authoring a wide range of books about folklore and the supernatural for a popular audience, which proved sufficiently financially successful that he became a full-time writer.
[1] However, these books eschewed any academic standards, with Smith noting that they lacked "the strength" of his earlier papers in Folklore.