author
Jeremiah Curtin
1835–1906
An American folklorist, translator, and ethnographer, he spent a lifetime chasing stories across languages and cultures. His work helped preserve Irish folklore and Native American traditions, while his English version of Quo Vadis became a huge popular success.
6 Audiobooks
Myths and Folk-tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars
by Jeremiah Curtin
The Mongols : A history
by Jeremiah Curtin
Myths of the Modocs
by Jeremiah Curtin
Myths and Folk Tales of Ireland
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 1835 to Irish immigrant parents and raised in Wisconsin, Jeremiah Curtin developed an early gift for languages that shaped his whole career. He graduated from Harvard in 1863 and went on to build a reputation as a linguist, translator, and collector of traditional tales.
Curtin is remembered for two kinds of work in particular. He gathered and published Irish folk material, including Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland and Tales of Fairies and the Ghost World, helping bring oral storytelling traditions to a wider audience. He also worked for the Bureau of American Ethnology from 1883 to 1891, recording the customs and mythologies of several Native American communities.
He was also a literary translator of unusual reach. His English translation of Henryk Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis became enormously popular, and he translated other Polish and Russian works as well. Curtin died in 1906, leaving behind a body of work that joined scholarship, travel, and a real curiosity about how people tell their stories.