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The Last of the Mohicans is an epic novel by James Fenimore Cooper. The story takes place in 1757 during the French and Indian War, when France and the Kingdom of Great Britain battled for control of the American and Canadian colonies. During this war, the French often allied themselves with Native American tribes in order to gain an advantage over the British, with unpredictable and often tragic results. Partly based on the real life adventures of Daniel Boone. ... Read more

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Having invented the novel of the western frontier, Cooperwent on to invent the sea novel. "The Pilot"'s shadowy hero--modeledon John Paul Jones--leads the American Navy in dangerous raids on theEnglish coast. In "The Red Rover," a notorious pirate is chased by adisguised agent of the Royal Navy. Romance, adventure, politicalintrigue, revelations of mistaken identity--here is Cooper at hisbest: a painter of brilliant seascapes, a riveting narrator ofsuspense. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

"I lov'd the King. God bless him!"
In 1823 James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) invented a new novelistic genre: the sea tale. He not only created that novelty, he underlined it through subtitling THE PILOT: A TALE OF THE SEA. Despite its subtitle most of the action of THE PILOT took place on or near the land of the northeastern coast of England. Five years later Cooper's second sea tale, THE RED ROVER, sailed off into deeper waters of the wide Atlantic, but not all that far from the coastlines of North America and the Caribbean. Never mind, the sea adventure tale genre was launched. And James Fenimore Cooper would write again and again adventures set on the salt waters of the seven seas as well as fresh waters of the Hudson and Kalamazoo rivers, Lakes Ontario and Otsego ("Glimmerglass") and others.

For Cooper had been a professional sailor before becoming America's first novelist able to live by his writings. And those wide-ranging works treated not only politics, cross-cultural comparisons of America and Europe but even included a still read history of the young United States Navy.

The 1991 Library of America presentation of THE PILOT and THE RED ROVER is 902 pages long. The two sea tales take up 868 pages of smaller than average print. The succeeding scholarly apparatus consists of Chronology (869 - 881) -- a detailed literary life of James Fenimore Cooper -- Note on the Texts (882 - 885) and Notes (886 - 902). The only obvious reader aids lacking are maps of northeastern England and the nearby "German Sea" as well as Rhode Island and the route of the Red Rover in its chase and naval engagements.

THE PILOT (pp. 1 - 422)

This is a novel of John Paul Jones, founder of the American navy, and his carrying the revolutionary war to the enemy. In this tale the locale is Northumberland on England's northeastern seacoast. By chance an American loyalist has taken his daughter and niece -- the daughter of his dead brother -- from rebel South Carolina to the mother country, not seen by his family in a century. His repurchased ancestral home is five miles from the sea. And John Paul Jones, the novel's mysterious pilot, and others are commissioned by the Continental Congress to wreak reprisal on the foe. The British take American hostages. So the Americans take British hostages to trade for their countrymen. Jones has six captives in mind, including two peers of the realm.

His plan against Northumberland is complicated by two young women and a young sailor, children of three sisters. They are more flexible in their loyalties. One women will readily give up her aging relative/protector to go anywhere with the rebel she loves. But one cousin will stay with her loyalist uncle despite her lover's rescue of her in Jones's raid. Jones's onetime lover refuses to join his rebellion and they part forever. How does the novel's South Carolina heroinefind true love? Read THE PILOT and find out. The last intelligible words of old Carolinian, ever loyal to Britain, are "I - I - I- lov'd the King -- God bless him ---." -OOO-

THE RED ROVER(pp. 423 - 868)

In 1759 in Newport, Rhode Island, we meet Captain Heidegger, master, allegedly of a mysterious ultra-sleek slaver in the outer harbor. Not long after a passenger packet puts to sea bound for the Carolinas, Heidegger proclaims himself the dreaded buccaneer, the Red Rover, and makes a long pursuit of the richly laden packet. Through perils of sea, storms, fog and of various other sorts, Heidegger defeats a British man-of-war pursuing him. He ends up freeing people you would not expect him to free, releases his pirate crew from their oaths of loyalty and disappears. At novel's end, Heidegger reappears, now in true identity. Some previously unacknowledged relatives gather at his deathbed. We learn that all along the dreaded Red Rover was a disguised colonial patriot, warring against the King years before the Colonies proclaimed their independence. The Rover's dying words salute American independence: "...we have triumphed!" -OOO-

THE PILOT and THE RED ROVER: two novels by James Fenimore Cooper that probe the issues that lead some people to stay loyal to a flawed ruler and others to join the other side.-OOO-

Another solid Library of America title....
Comprising two novels, Sea Tales reflects Cooper's interest in matters maritime.More famous for The Leatherstocking Tales which brought us The Last of the Mohicans, few know that Cooper wrote a history of the US Navy which is considered a classic of naval literature. In Sea Tales, Cooper extends his fascination with a fictional bent. The Pilot begins off the shores of England during the American Revolution.To fulfill a secret mission, Cooper chooses one of America's early naval heroes as his protagonist, but leaves only clues as to who this might be.We follow our hero and his allies through twisting and often improbable plots.Yet, as his mission occurs mainly on shore, we find a "sea tale" that is surprisingly landlocked.

Not so in the second story, The Red Rover.Here Cooper casts us upon the savage sea with a vengeance as a buccaneer and the British navy scheme and maneuver to gain the upper hand.The Red Rover is clearly the better of the two tales, but modern readers must be prepared for a verbose narrative with bulging descriptives and implausible plot twists that wouldn't fly in a latter day novel.

Library of America publishes a product that truly finds the sweet spot between quality and price.I own many Library of America editions and they do not disappoint.James Fenimore Cooper's Sea Tales is no exception.Cooper's content is as pleasurable as the book within which it is bound.If you enjoy 19th-century literature, the sea, sailing, or simply authors who truly relish the story they're telling, you'll want to devote the time and expense. 4 stars.

The Red Rover is wonderful!
Instead of reading from the beginning, I started with The Red Rover first.I enjoyed it immensely; it was filled with sailors' superstitions, eery encounters with unknown ships, and many tales of the 'unexplained' occurances on sea. There were wonderful descriptions from Cooper that appealed to the senses.The Red Rover is a page-turning tale of suspense.The reader is left to ponder over the identity of the captain Red Rover and the nature of his near magical power over his men, yet Cooper gives the reader a slap in the face when we realize that it is our hero, "Wilder", who is not what he seems!The story continues and ends with more identity-revealing.I finished The Red Rover with a dazzled mind, and then turned to The Pilot.Expecting more intriguing tales of the sea, this book was a let-down in that it nearly focuses on two young lieutenants trying to kidnap their lovers from England and whisk them away, back to America.Redeeming the tale slightly is the vague pilot himself, never named, but patterned on a heroic and rather "chivalrous" John Paul Jones. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

"The simple Quaker boy, 'Jem Cooper' could use a bit more ballast"
"James Cooper" he was born and named in 1789. "James FENIMORE Cooper" he was renamed by the New York Legislature in 1836. He died in 1855. In JAMES FENIMORE COOPER: THE EARLY YEARS, University of Connecticut Professor of English Wayne Franklin takes his subject from birth to departure with family for seven years in Europe in 1826. Still only 36 years old when he sailed from Manhattan June 1, 1836, the young author had just published THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS The Last of the Mohicans (Tantor Unabridged Classics), his sixth novel. Its five predecessors, beginning in 1820 were PRECAUTION Precaution,THE SPY The Spy, THE PIONEERS The Pioneers (Signet Classics), THE PILOT The pilot: a tale of the sea. By James Fenimore Cooper. Illustrated from drawings by F. O. C. Darley. AND LIONEL LINCOLN Lionel Lincoln (The Works of James Fenimore Cooper: Mohawk Edition). He had also issued TALES FOR FIFTEEN Imagination and Heart, Tales for Fifteen, a book of short stories, under the pseudonym Jane Morgan.

Cooper had first visited Europe 20 years earlier as a young merchant seaman. He had then been a US naval officer just before the War of 1812. He had recently turned down Secretary of State Henry Clay's offer of appointment as Minister to Sweden/Norway (Cooper sensed too much unavoidable work, distracting from his writing!) while accepting from President John Quincy Adams a sinecure: undemanding, revenue-producing commission as American consul at the newly created post in Lyons, France.

If you read nothing more of this impressive scholarly tome, at least dig into its packed 23 page "Introduction." From its first paragraph you are reminded that "James Fenimore Cooper (1789 -1851) remains one of the most original yet most misunderstood figures in the history of American culture. Almost single-handedly in the 1820s Cooper invented the key forms of American fiction -- the Western, the sea tale, the Revolutionary romance. ... Furthermore, in producing and shrewdly marketing fully 10 percent of all American novels in the 1820s, most of them best sellers, Cooper made it possible for other aspiring authors to earn a living by their writings" (xi).

Cooper was also (Introduction, xxxi) a "representative" man, a creature of his age of marked economic anxiety. Indeed, the economy, especially Cooper's debts inherited from his father, Judge William Cooper, founder of Cooperstown, drives the biography. Until recently, the Cooper estate held back from scholars many of Cooper's papers. Wayne Franklin happily draws upon them to demonstrate the Angst that drove Cooper year after year to look for paths to financial stability: real estate, whaling off the coast of Brazil and finally writing. Cooper seemed, barely, to hold poverty at bay, but at his death, his survivors had to scramble to make ends meet. An earlier biographer had portrayed James Fenimore Cooper as a wealthy gentleman of leisure who dabbled in literature as a pastime. Not so.

Towards the end of his narrative of his subject's first 36 years (Chapter 16, "Literary Business," pp. 510 - 512), Professor Franklin lays out how James Cooper legally added Fenimore to his name. His mother had long ago asked him to assume her family's name. In February 1826 he petitioned the New York Legislature, in effect, to authorize him to create a new family name for himself: Fenimore-Cooper. Somehow this was misunderstood in legislative committee to be a request simply for an additional middle name, Fenimore, as surname. By May 1826 the Legislature had made its change, not Cooper's!

Biographer Franklin speculates that the new name expressed for James Fenimore Cooper, as he now was, a "sense of new beginnings." With many hitherto humiliating court proceedings over his father's estate finally decided more or less to his liking, Cooper had at last simplified and gotten a hold on his finances. His wildly popular novels had given him a new, advanced social status not unworthy of his patrician wife Susan's DeLancey family. "The simple Quaker boy, 'Jem Cooper' could use a bit more ballast" (512f). Hence Fenimore.

Do not expect quick, painless profit from perusingJAMES FENIMORE COOPER: THE EARLY YEARS, especially if you do not already have a lot of Cooper's writing under your belt, more especially his first six novels. This is a book by a Cooper scholar for other scholars and for serious students of English and American literature. It is minutely detailed as to Cooper's finances. It bristles with digressions into the lives seemingly of every relative, friend or foe Cooper had up until 1826. In some ways, THE EARLY YEARS is an encyclopedia. It demands and deserves re-reading. But first, you had better read plenty of James Fenimore Cooper!-OOO- ... Read more

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Set in 1757 during the French and Indian War, as Britain and France fought for control of North America, The Last of the Mohicans is a historical novel and a rousing adventure story. It is also, Wayne Franklin argues in his introduction, a probing examination of the political and cultural contest taking shape more than half a century later in the author’s own day as European settlement continued to relentlessly push Native Americans westward. The John Harvard Library edition reproduces the authoritative text of the novel from The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper, published by the State University of New York Press.

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Webster's edition of this classic is organized to expose the reader to a maximum number of synonyms and antonyms for difficult and often ambiguous English words that are encountered in other works of literature, conversation, or academic examinations. Extremely rare or idiosyncratic words and expressions are given lower priority in the notes compared to words which are ¿difficult, and often encountered¿ in examinations. Rather than supply a single synonym, many areprovided for a variety of meanings, allowing readers to better grasp the ambiguity of the English language, and avoid using the notes as a pure crutch. Having the reader decipher a word's meaning within context serves to improve vocabulary retention and understanding. Each page covers words not already highlighted on previous pages. If a difficult word is not noted on a page, chances are that it has been highlighted on a previous page. A more complete thesaurus is supplied at the end of the book; synonyms and antonyms are extracted from Webster's Online Dictionary.

PSAT¿ is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation neither of which sponsors or endorses this book; SAT¿ is a registered trademark of the College Board which neither sponsors nor endorses this book; GRE¿, AP¿ and Advanced Placement¿ are registered trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which neither sponsors nor endorses this book, GMAT¿ is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is neither affiliated with this book nor endorses this book, LSAT¿ is a registered trademark of the Law School Admissions Council which neither sponsors nor endorses this product. All rights reserved. ... Read more

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The Last of the Mohicans enjoyed tremendous popularity both in America and abroad, offering its readers not only a variation on the immensely popular traditional captivity narrative of the time, but also characters that would become iconic figures in the young nation's emerging literature. The novel's central action follows Leatherstocking and his two faithful friends, Chingachgook and Uncas, as they come to the aid of two daughters of a British officer seeking to become reunited with their father. The novel provides insights into Cooper's own thinking on Native American and White relations during the early national period, revealing a profound ambivalence to the reality that the rising fortunes of the young United States meant the declining fortunes of the nation's Native American inhabitants. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Action ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

America's first novel of American manners by an American author
How do you review a long, 29-chapter book with nearly 70 named characters, a dozen or more of whom are reasonably central to the tale? And of those dozen "biggies", nine are carryovers from a previous novel. That is the nature of James Fenimore Cooper's 1838 HOME AS FOUND, the continuation and completion of the same year's HOMEWARD BOUND.

HOMEWARD BOUND was a sea adventure tale, of the sort pioneered by Cooper in 1823 with THE PILOT, featuring John Paul Jones and the American Revolution in British waters. HOMEWARD BOUND also launched an entirely new genre of novel: the passenger vessel as microcosm of a society or societies. The societies in question were mid-1830s England and the USA, and their 27 named characters represented national strengths and weaknesses. For mysterious causes, the luxurious 700-ton American sailing packet Montauk was chased from London and Portsmouth by a British warship clear across the Atlantic. The Montauk was dismasted in a severe storm. It took refuge in protected coastl waters off North Africa where it was seized by Arabs and then recovered by its own crew and most of the men passengers. It then refitted its rigging from a cannibalized Danish freighter and limped safely into Manhattan harbor, lightened by deaths of several men through combat and after the removal of two passengers by the British corvette.

HOME AS FOUND begins in Manhattan the day the Montauk arrives and its passengers disembark. Our focus throughout is on three members of the wealthy, refined Effingham family on their way home to their (fictional) ancestral New York village, Templeton (today's Cooperstown), after a dozen years in Europe and elsewhere. The UK edition of this novel was named EVE EFFINGHAM and that 20-year old heiress is even less central to the story named for her than Sir Walter Scott's Wilfred of Ivanhoe had been in IVANHOE. Eve was only eight when she sailed for Europe with her recently widowed father, Edward, and with her nanny. In France they acquired and still have in New York Mlle Viefville, Eve's governess, and a chambermaid, Annette. From time to time they were joined by Edward's first cousin (brother's sons they were, born on the same day) John ("Cousin Jack") Effingham.

Aboard the Montauk Eve had fallen in love with a young man met years earlier in Vienna. He was taken off the Montauk by the British warship's captain. By novel's end, when they and another couple wed in a double ceremony in Templeton, we will have known this young hero under four names, Mr. Blunt, Paul Powis, Paul Assheton and, finally, after identity unraveling, Paul Effington, legitimate son of immensely wealthy Jack Effington.

The plot is weak and through its false identities, Gothic. The Effington party spends the winter in Edward's town house in Manhattan. It then moves by steamboat up the Hudson, then by canal and carriages on to the "the Wigwam," the restored family mansion in Templeton on Lake Otsego.

Cooper was quite clear that the point of HOME AS FOUND was not adventure but satire: pokingfun at American pretensions in the 1830s. Americans are seen as greatly declined after even the mere dozen years the Effinghams had spent learning languages, hobnobbing with a Czar, an Emperor and the great ones of Europe. They had ranged from London to Paris to Rome to Jerusalem and then went back home to New York.

And what did the proud Effinghams find at home? Americans are provincial. They do not think for themselves. They take their ideas primarily from England and secondarily from France. In religion they are demand-side levellers. The returned Effinghams meet and resist a strong popular movement to convert the venerable Episcopalian church in Templeton into an amphitheater with no pulpit, opened up pews and with all future emphasis on preaching rather than praying. Templeton has five churches and even more sects and most local Christians disapprove of Eve because she dances, plays cards and reads her prayers from a book.

During their winter season in Manhattan, the Effinghams and Mlle Viefville had attended a series of entertainments. Only one evening passed Effingham muster: an hour with an old-line hostess open to quiet, un-pushy, educated, creative old-line friends. Other parties are built either around nouveaux social climbers or pseudo-intellectuals and artists.

"Hajjis" are in great demand. By this term is meant returned Americans who have spent at least a week or two "doing" Paris. It is the custom in Manhattan "society" for women to move about a hall on the arm of a man. Eve and Mlle Viefville follow French fashion and move around unescorted. Horrors! Most of these people are scorned by the proud Effinghams and are disliked in turn. Are these Effinghams clones of Jane Austen's haughty Mr. Darcy?

In HOME AS FOUND we deepen our acquaintance with off-putting American Steadfast Dodge, introduced to us on the decks of the Montauk in October 1835 (or thereabouts) in Portsmouth. He is a newspaper publisher returning from a couple of months in Europe whence he filed reports on the "true" state of affairs for a coterie of ignorant American readers. in HOMEWARD BOUND he ran from combat with the Arabs, but now unabashedly presents himself to readers as a hero.

We also renew acquaintance with grizzled 60-year old Captain John Truck of the Montauk, invited to Templeton after another voyage to and from London. He becomes chums with a local fisherman dubbed "the Commodore." They spend many happy hours together on the lake, philosophize about the merits of salt water sailing v. fresh water sailing, drink together and admire the Effinghams together. Captain Truck had been lionized in Manhattan parties, where he was once mistaken for an Episcopalian clergyman. But the better people of Manhattan society recognize the Captain as a diamond in the rough. He even falls in love with a 70-year old American lady of true high society.

And so it goes.

America, argues Cooper, began extraordinarily well with Washington, Franklin and the Founders. But just look at it now! Men live to get rich quick, especially through creating speculative bubbles in western lands and the expanding frontier. Americans are provincial, levellers, jealous of their betters (better by virtue of inherited estates, education and demonstrated merit). Templeton is unrecognizable after a twelve year absence abroad. "Birds of passage" make up half New York's population. They come to an older settlement, pause a year or two for a breather before moving on westward, and try to change the good old settled ways of yore.Cynical Cousin Jack Effingham argues that 18 months in America is the equivalent of a generation in Europe. Things change very fast in Templeton, as elsewhere in the USA, and usually for the worse.

HOME AS FOUND has been called America's first novel of American manners written by an American. Cooper held up a mirror to show his provincial countrymen how they might look to a family returning after a dozen educational years abroad. It was not a pretty picture.

HOME AS FOUND has considerable humor. I found myself chuckling aloud a couple of dozen times. But its humor is sarcastic, obvious humor. James Fenimore Cooper attempted something important. His brain teemed with insights. But he often failed to find the right words or a light touch to make his point. He argued that it was almost impossible to write a novel of manners about America. For America had little history no hereditary social classes.And yet ..... HOME AS FOUND grows on you. I was confused, lost in detail and bored after a first reading. I greatly enjoyed the second. I now rate this book Three and a Half Stars, rounding upward to Four Stars: * * * *.
-OOO-

Mediocore Social Criticism
If you are searching for a distinctly British aristocratic view on life, read this book.if you are an American, as this author is, flee from the terrible grip of "Home as Found" as the book slowly entraps oneinto delving further into the pages, when suddenly one finds the veryculture that he/she has come to love has many loopholes of stupidity.Ifyou wish to remain in ignorance of the benefits of aristocratic society,and the down points of American democracy, do not read this book.I givethis work a 3 as it contains no real content for a storyline, but holds tothe teaching principle of repetition to pass a point across. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Sea Stories; History / General; Juvenile Fiction / Action ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Volume: 2; Original Published by: Carey, Lea and Carey in 1827 in 340 pages; Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Historical; Fiction / Literary; Juvenile Fiction / Historical / United States / General; Juvenile Fiction / Historical / United States / 19th Century; Juvenile Fiction / People & Places / United States / General; ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Typical Cooper
I'm a fan of Cooper and as such have enjoyed all of his works that I have read. The Pioneers is no exception

The Leatherstocking Tales: The Pioneers
'The Pioneers' is subtitled 'a descriptive tale' so don't say you weren't warned. Cooper's first book in the Leatherstocking Tales (the fourth chronologically) lacks anything but the thinnest plot for most of its pages. Instead, there are lengthy descriptions designed to give the reader an idea of frontier life (clearly sanitized for his contemporary audience).

Frankly, most modern readers will find 'The Pioneers' aimless and flat-out dull. I give it two stars out of respect to Cooper's intent: he was not aiming to write a fully plotted book. Yet, even as 'a descriptive tale' the book falls a bit short because it's not clear what Cooper intends to describe. Rather than focusing on frontier life, there is a lot of exposition about his characters, most of whom I found paper thin and/or annoying.

On the other hand, Cooper's theme that man's love of the wilderness as the very thing that leads to its destruction is clearer in 'The Pioneers' than in any of the other books. There are a couple of powerful scenes depicting the vast waste of settlers taming the wilderness. Massive trees destroyed senselessly when a little care would do as well, and a scene filled with mindless slaughter of wildlife. While the leader of the settlement mouths platitudes about protecting the wilderness, he actually does little or nothing.

It is through this theme that the elderly characters of Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook are most effective. Here called the Leatherstocking and Mohegan, the pair represent the fading American frontier. Both watch helplessly as laws and civilization subvert the wilderness they have lived in and loved all their lives. Leatherstocking finds himself in direct conflict with these laws merely by hunting. Mohegan is especially poignant if you have read the books in chronological order. The proud Indian warrior/hero is now a christianized alcoholic. The cause for his fall is pretty clearly laid at the doorstep of the growing nation which displaced and destroyed his people.

Unfortunately, these powerful characterizations make up a very small portion of the book.The bulk is given over to tepid Victorian-styled dramatics, complete with stilted plotting around long lost relatives revealed deus ex machina to resolve the corners Cooper writes himself into. Most modern readers will find these elements very cheesy. When Cooper does get around to the plot, he delivers some solid action in the last fifth of the book with some truly cinematic scenes (Leatherstocking leaping through a forest fire to rescue several key characters). However, Cooper renders his denoumont anticlimactic by following it with a silly battle and some revelations you never saw coming (not in a good way). There is a ray of brilliant writing at the end when, in the final scene, Leatherstocking leaves the remains of his home forever to escape the encroaching civilization.

Overall, I found this book only marginally interesting, and it feels like Cooper stumbled/lucked into the intriguing Leatherstocking and Chingachgook characters by accident. It's like he realizes halfway through the book that these characters are way more interesting than the ones he's been focused on. As such, 'The Pioneers' should only be read if you truly want to get the entire five books under your belt.Otherwise, start with 'The Last of the Mohicans.'

Written for his own pleasure, not yours.
This is, I believe, James Fenimore Cooper's first published work.Before his writings, there were really no great American writers writing stories based in America.Therefore, Cooper is often considered the father of "American" American literature.His writings helped shape the image people all over the world had of America.

To me, this novel was a disappointment.I was hoping for something a bit more gripping and exciting, but what I found was a sort of feel-good, worry-free tour of a small town in upstate New York with amusing, but rather innocent and uninspiring characters.While there are a number of scenes that present the characters with real and substantial dangers, the way they are written and the manner in which Cooper's characters are dealt with throughout the book, leaves the reader with little doubt that things will turn out fine in the end.Maybe I'm being too critical, but I just couldn't really get excited about this story.

This book introduces Cooper's most famous character, Leatherstocking, who appears in numerous other Cooper tales (The Last of the Mohicans, The Deerslayer, The Pathfinder, and The Prarie).In THE PIONEERS, Natty Bumppo is already an old man that really only wishes to live out his life in peace.His character and motivations remain somewhat of a mystery throughout this book, and it is not clear whether Cooper felt him to be a character that he would write more about all along or only after this book was published.

In Cooper's introduction to this book, he really kind of bashes the story, claiming that he wrote it for himself and didn't really consider the importance of a broad appeal for his audience.The setting and characters represent the town he grew up in (the town his father founded) and his own family and friends.This admission together with the undeniably slow first half of the book may have helped sour my view of the whole.While some of the characters, notably Elizabeth Temple and Oliver Edwards, are extremely likable and well-written, they just weren't enough to make me love this story.

I like some of the things about Cooper's writing, so I'll give his other books a try, but I wasn't too impressed with this one.

A short review of James Fenimore Cooper the Pioneers
Classical Cooper work, it can't be beat.The state of New York is expanding, and the make up of the classes is expounded on.This is pioneer budding New York with the wilderness slowly turning its great land holdings into a people orientended land.This is the land our forefathers knew.

The story isn't just about land, its about the people that inhabit it.Our hero is a Long Rifle.A man that was part of the landscape long before people were settling it.The times are changing and he has taken a young man under his wing, one with his own abilities.They both hold a secret known only to themselves.

The cast of characters besides our two hero's, include the Squire, the Dr., the Squires black male servent, and of course a young woman, and many others.From the gracious living of the upper class, to the world of our heros, which is the forest, you won't want to put this book down.The events and lives of people in that century, cutting into what had been wilderness is covered, as only Cooper can.

When preachers enter the wilderness, game grows scarce.
It is Christmas eve 1793 in Central New York's pioneer village of Templeton. Although only seven years old, Templeton boasts of 50 structures, two lawyers, a doctor and a sampling of tradesmen and farmers. The town sits at the lower end of Lake Otsego and timber abounds, though the recent settlers cut it down without a thought for fuel and farmland as if it would last forever.

Most of the native American Indians have moved west, having sold their land to the King, who then lost it to the successful American rebels. But title to local lands flows from an old Royal grant. And there is a shadow on the claim of the town's richest man, Judge Marmaduke Temple to own the many thousands of acres that he is systematically selling off to immigrants of many ethnic backgrounds.

Before the Revolution the Judge had a school friend, son and heir of a well offEnglish military officer, Major Oliver Effingham. This friendship made the Judge's fortune. Came the war, however, and the friends fought for opposite sides. The Judge's side won and the Englishman lost all. The Judge then bought up his onetime friend's lands at auction. Was this greed or deliberate protection of his friend's interests? Read the novel to the end through many mysteries and twists and find out! The Major, who lived in Connecticut, disappeared in the fog of revolutionary war, leaving a son Edward and grandson Edward Oliver.

A "mysterious" young stranger arrives on the lake. He calls himself Oliver Edwards and he lives in a cabin with another white man, Natty Bumppo, a man of 67 and an even older native American Christian called variously Chingachgook, Big Serpent and Indian John. On Christmas eve, this trio is out hunting a deer. Judge Temple in a sleigh is driving his teenage daughter home from years of study in New York City. The Judge shoots at a fleeing deer, as do Natty and Oliver. Oliver's shot kills the beast, the judge's misses, hitting Oliver in the shoulder. But when the sleigh's team bolts, Oliver saves the party from danger, including his beautiful daughter Elizabeth.

Has this plot beginning caught your attention? Then read on. For some initially unclear reason relating to land title, young Oliver obviously hates the judge who hires him as secretary. Later Natty and Indian John kill a deer out of season. The law puts Natty in the stocks and then in jail. But he escapes with the help of his two friends. And through thick and thin affection grows between Oliver and Elizabeth.

The novel raises questions about who owns America: God, the Indians, the Dutch, the English, friends of the Indians like Natty? Civilization arrives in the form of Templeton (today's Coopertown where author James Fenimore grew up). Civilization brings law and order but also personal power, so much that it can be abused. In the end injustice forces Natty to leave and head for the western prairies. He has seen too many changes, too much loss of space to stores and churches. He says to Reverend Mr Grant:

"... I see, times be altering in these mountains from what they was thirty years ago. ... Heigh-ho! I never know'd preaching come into a settlement but it made game scarce, and raised the price of gunpowder." (Ch. XII)

But readers who trust in God are rewarded when at least partial justice is done by story's end to everyone's claims to properties and rights.

THE PIONEERS did for tourism to the Finger Lakes of New York what Sir Walter Scott's LADY OF THE LAKE did for the Trossachs of Scotland. Fenimore Cooper's novel is a salute to old multinnational New York just before Puritans wandering in from Massachusetts put their homogenizing stamp on an easier going culture. -OOO- ... Read more

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