The Last of the Mohicans

by James Fenimore Cooper, Richard Hutson (Introduction), Hugh C. MacDougall (Afterword)

Overview

James Fenimore Cooper’s classic American story of life on the frontier during the French and Indian War.
 
The Last of the Mohicans, one of the world’s great adventure stories, dramatizes how the birth of American culture was intertwined with that of Native Americans. In 1757, as the English and the French war over American territory, the frontier scout Hawkeye—Natty Bumppo—risks his life to escort two sisters through hostile Huron country. Hawkeye enlists the aid of his Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas, and together they battle deception, brutality, and death in a thrilling story of loyalty, moral courage, and love.
 
With an Introduction by Richard Hutson
and a New Afterword by Hugh C. MacDougall

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451417862
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/04/2014
Series:	The Leatherstocking Tales
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	4.16(w) x 6.68(h) x 1.19(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was born in Burlington, New Jersey, and his family moved to Cooperstown, New York, while he was still an infant. He attended Yale College until he was expelled for bad behavior. He served in the U.S. Navy, resigning in 1811 to get married. With his story The Pilot (1823), Cooper set the style for a new genre of sea fiction. His most famous novels are the Leather-Stocking Tales including The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841), featuring the quintessential American hero Natty Bumppo. Cooper, a keen social critic, wrote several well-regarded naval histories.
 
Richard Hutson is an associate professor of English and director of the American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. His teaching and writing have been primarily on American popular culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially on the American West.
 
Hugh C. MacDougall, a graduate of Harvard, Columbia Law School and Columbia School of International Affairs, served in the State Department for twenty-eight years, including postings in tropical Africa, Brazil, and Burma. He is a founder of the James Fenimore Cooper Society, and has presented many papers on Cooper and his writings.

Date of Birth:

September 15, 1789

Date of Death:

September 14, 1851

Place of Birth:

Burlington, New Jersey

Place of Death:

Cooperstown, New York

Education:

Yale University (expelled in 1805)

Read an Excerpt

Chapter I
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Last of the Mohicans"
by .
Copyright © 2014 James Fenimore Cooper.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Maps
Introduction
James Fenimore Cooper: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

The Last of the Mohicans

• Preface
  Volume I
  Volume II

Appendix A: Illustrations

Appendix B: Cooper’s Historical Sources

1. From John Gottlieb Heckewelder, History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations (1876)
2. From Jonathan Carver, Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768(1781)
3. From Benjamin Silliman, A Short Tour Between Hartford and Quebec (1824)

Appendix C: Recollections and Appraisals of Cooper

1. From the United States Literary Gazette (May 1826)
2. From the Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres (April 1826)
3. From W.H. Gardiner, North American Review (1826)
4. From William Cullen Bryant, “Discourse on the Life, Genius, and Writings of J. Fenimore Cooper” (1852)
5. From Susan Fenimore Cooper, Pages and Pictures, from the Writings of James Fenimore Cooper (1861)
6. From Mark Twain, “Fenimore Cooper’s Further Literary Offenses,” The New England Quarterly (c. 1895)

Appendix D: The Cherokee Removal

1. The United States Congress’s Indian Removal Act (1830)
2. From Andrew Jackson’s Second State of the Union Address (1830)

Select Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

D. H. Lawrence

In his immortal friendship of Chingachgook and Matty Bumppo [Cooper] dreamed the nucleus of a new society….A stark stripped human relationship of two men, deeper than the deeps of sex. Deeper than property, deeper than fatherhood, deeper than marriage, deeper than Love.

James Franklin Beard

The Last of the Mohicans raises again the question of the efficacy of human effort to control irrational forces at work in individual men, races, and nations. The question has never been more pertinent than now.

From the Publisher

“In his immortal friendship of Chingachgook and Natty Bumppo [Cooper] dreamed the nucleus of a new society….A stark human relationship of two men, deeper than the deeps of sex. Deeper than property, deeper than fatherhood, deeper than marriage, deeper than Love.” –D. H. Lawrence

“The Last of the Mohicans raises again the question of the efficacy of human effort to control irrational forces at work in individual men, races, and nations. The question has never been more pertinent than now.” –James Franklin Beard 

Reading Group Guide

1. How do Cooper's characters, specifically Natty Bumppo and the Indian Magua, test the boundary between Indian and white cultures? What happens to these characters? How does the metaphorical racial boundary extend to that between wilderness and cultivated land, if at all?

2. What are the differences Cooper outlines between the Mohicans and the Delawares, and to what end? What role does Uncas play in the conflict between the two tribes? What is the significance of his relationship with Cora?

3. How does Natty Bumppo's view of society oppose Munro's, particularly at the novel's conclusion? How do Natty's views support or contradict his own existence, straddling two worlds as he does? How does this deep-rooted ambivalence about social and racial hierarchy inform the novel?

Editorial Reviews

In his immortal friendship of Chingachgook and Natty Bumppo [Cooper] dreamed the nucleus of a new society…A stark human relationship of two men, deeper than the deeps of sex. Deeper than property, deeper than fatherhood, deeper than marriage, deeper than Love.”—D. H. Lawrence
 
“The Last of the Mohicans raises again the question of the efficacy of human effort to control irrational forces at work in individual men, races, and nations. The question has never been more pertinent than now.”—James Franklin Beard

From the Publisher

Nearly 200 years on, the tale of The Last of the Mohicans is still a part of the American consciousness.

PopMatters - Kerrie Mills

Cooper’s sympathy is large, and his humor is as genuine—and as perfectly unaffected—as his art.

Joseph Conrad

"Paul Gutjahr's edition of The Last of the Mohicans is a model text, ideally suited for the classroom or the general reader. The decision to print the novel in its original two-volume format foregrounds Cooper's careful structuring of the book. Gutjahr's informative introduction effectively explores the novel's formal structure and its engagements with colonial and antebellum American history. The contextual materials included are also well-chosen. Including excerpts of Cooper's ethnographic source material in the edition is extremely helpful, as this will aid readers in developing a deeper understanding of the novel's representations of colonial history. This is certainly an edition I will use and recommend."

David J. Carlson California State University

"James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans presents a double challenge to today's readers; a work of historical fiction, it has become, in itself, a historical artifact in need of explication. Paul Gutjahr's elegant introduction and judicious choice of secondary sources help to place Cooper's novel in its historical moment, while at the same time clarifying the novel's own engagements with American history. Accentuating Cooper's engagement with issues of race, gender, and hemispheric conflict, Gutjahr's edition reminds us of why Cooper's novel remains timely and even urgent. It will be the edition of choice for scholars, students, and casual readers alike."

Leon Jackson University of South Carolina

Nearly 200 years on, the tale of The Last of the Mohicans is still a part of the American consciousness.
— Kerrie Mills

PopMatters

Cooper's Leatherstocking Tale, set amid the French and Indian War, is a classic filled with dense, lyrical language that makes for difficult reading. Robertson Dean's presentation breathes life into Cooper's adventure as he recounts how the scout Hawkeye, along with his Mohican cohorts Cingachgook and Uncas, repeatedly rescue a British party of two young women and their escorts from the "raving savages." Hawkeye's ironic turn of phrase is well executed by Dean, who also relishes the dramatic chapter-opening quotations from Shakespeare. The lilt Dean creates for the religious musician David Gamut is an added enhancement. Some listeners may be startled by the graphic violence and Natty Bumpo's disdain for the hostile native tribes‚ outside of the noble Mohicans‚ but the portrait of the unspoiled wilderness is timeless. D.P.D. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

JUN/JUL 07 - AudioFile