Actually, the full title is…
Being those parts of The Deerslayer, The
Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie
which specially pertain to Natty Bumppo otherwise known as Pathfinder, Deerslayer,
or Hawkeye; the whole arranged in chronological order from Hawkeye’s youth on
the New York frontier in King George's war until his death on the Western
prairies in Jefferson’s Administration.
No one who is conversant with the Western genre or
frontier fiction, let alone American literature is not at the very least familiar
with the name of Fenimore Cooper, or The Last of the Mohicans. Fewer
have read the most famous volume let alone the entire quartet of novels.
Those who have, must admit that some of it is a slog.
But there are also moments of high brilliance, sparks of poetry, suffused with
romance and a true love of the land.
What we have here is a gift from the editor Allan
Nevins. He has taken all five novels, rearranged them into one epic novel and
trimmed much of what felt a slog.
In short, it is the Cooper high spots read as a
narrative whole.
Today we may underestimate just how influential and
popular Cooper was on both the American continent and across the pond. English
authors such as William Makepeace Thackeray held him higher in esteem than his own
beloved Isle’s Walter Scott; French heads of state quoted from the novels well
into WWI.
The luster fell off Cooper sometime in the early 20th
Century. Nevins sought to restore the sheen to these novels that were held in
such esteem.
Here is Nevins from his Introduction.
The proper course in reading Cooper (as
with Scott, Hugo and many another) is to cast side all his inferior works; to
fasten on the best books; to practice judicious skipping; and to dwell
judiciously on elements of strength. When this is done, Cooper stands forth as
a great writer. Some of his heroines are women as staunch, true, and fearless
as any American life ever produced. His descriptions, harder to detach from the
structure of his novels than careless readers suppose, sometimes rank with the
best word painting; for they are filled, as Bryant noted, with a true poetry.
Many of the quaint utterances of Leatherstocking and Tom Coffin go straight to
the heart of knotty human problems as their balls [bullets] went to their
targets. Most of the dialogue is simplicity and naturalness itself. And the
cumulative effect of the Leatherstocking tales, like that of Scott's stories of
his native land, is tremendous. Those who take the pains to read the five
novels attentively, taking them in proper succession from Deerslayer's awkward
youth to the trapper’s mellow old age, will find that they have read nothing
less than the nearest approach yet made to an American epic.
Nevins has done us a great service in providing a
condensed single-volume that returns this volume to its proper stature.
