author
Jeremiah Curtin
1835–1906
A gifted linguist and tireless collector of stories, this 19th-century scholar helped preserve Irish folktales and Native American traditions that might otherwise have been lost. He also introduced many English-language readers to major Polish literature through his translations.
6 Audiobooks
Myths and Folk-tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars
by Jeremiah Curtin
The Mongols : A history
by Jeremiah Curtin
Myths and Folk Tales of Ireland
by Jeremiah Curtin
Myths of the Modocs
by Jeremiah Curtin
Creation Myths of Primitive America In relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind
by Jeremiah Curtin
The Mongols in Russia
by Jeremiah Curtin
About the author
Born in Detroit in 1835 and raised in Wisconsin in an Irish immigrant family, Jeremiah Curtin became known as an American ethnographer, folklorist, and translator with an exceptional gift for languages. He studied at Harvard and built a reputation for learning languages quickly and using them to explore history, myth, and oral tradition.
Curtin is especially remembered for collecting and publishing Irish folktales and for his fieldwork with the Bureau of American Ethnology between 1883 and 1891, when he documented the customs, stories, and mythologies of several Native American communities. His work preserved a large body of traditional material and made it available to wider audiences.
He was also an important translator, particularly of the Polish novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz. Through those translations, he helped bring major works of Polish fiction to English-speaking readers. Curtin died in 1906, leaving behind a body of work that connects folklore, language study, and literary translation.