Edward Curtis Paperbacks — Project

A 2+ year effort to digitize and publish all 20 volumes of The North American Indian in paperback for the first time.

Summary

Self-portrait of Edward S. Curtis — Edward S. Curtis (self-portrait).

This project started as a practical problem: I wanted to read the North American Indian, all twenty volumes, not just look at the pictures published in dozens of books, but read Edward Curtis's original text. I knew they must contain a wealth of information most people had likely never read, and I had to have them! The problem was that the original volumes are nearly impossible to access and incredibly expensive to collect. Due to the very high quality, size, and production cost of the originals, only a limited quantity of the twenty volume sets

were made in Ed's time. Ed funded his research sometimes partly and at other times completley from the book sales, the proceeds of each volume going to funding travel for the creation of the next. Ed was not a rich man, and this was a huge project, it took him over twenty years to complete the entire set. Now, the remaining sets are only available in university libraries, private collections, or for sale by a handful of scavaging antique peddlers in Santa Fe...

So, I decided to digitize and rebuild each volume for paperback myself, then I published the full set so others could read them too. Don't worry, they have been public domain for decades. The project took me a little over two years to complete, multiple rounds of layout and cover edits, plus the python workflow I built to automate this massive task, but I think it was well worth the effort. I have not read them all yet, but I am working on it! Although frustrating at times, I really enjoyed the project and everything it taught me on a variety of levels, I have endless appreciation for Mr. Curtis and all he was able to accomplish. Thanks, Ed!

What I did

Selected images

Notes

The public site is intentionally simple: two pages, fast loading, and focused on the books. Most links route directly to the Amazon product pages.