The Last of the Mohicans

Angered by the values of his materialistic society Hawk-eye lives apart from the other white men sharing the solitude and sublimity of the wilderness with his Mohican Indian friend Chingachgook. As the savageries of war test these exiled men they agree to guide two sisters in search of their father through hostile Indian country - even if it means risking everything. An enduring American classicThe Last of the Mohicans is a fast-paced portrait of fierce individualism and courage set against massacres raids battles and a doomed love affair. It is also the unforgettable story of the friendship between two men. Review ""[Cooper's] sympathy is large and his humor is as genuine -- and as perfectly unaffected -- as his art.""- Joseph Conrad From the Back Cover At the centre of the novel is the celebrated 'Massacre' of British troops and their families by Indian allies of the French at Fort William Henry in 1757. Around this historical event Cooper built a romantic fiction of captivity sexuality and heroism in which the destiny of the Mohican Chingachgook and his son Uncas is inseparable from the lives of Alice and Cora Munro and of Hawkeye the frontier scout. About the Author James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) grew up at Otsego Hall his father’s manorial estate near Lake Otsego in upstate New York. Educated at Yale he spent five years at sea as a foremast hand and then as a midshipman in the navy. At thirty he was suddenly plunged into a literary career when his wife challenged his claim that he could write a better book that the English novel he was reading to her. The result wasPrecaution (1820) a novel of manners. His second bookThe Spy (1821) was an immediate success and withThe Pioneers (1823) he began his series of Leatherstocking Tales. By 1826 whenThe Last of the Mohicans appeared his standing as a major novelist was clearly established. From 1826 to 1833 Cooper and his family lived and traveled in France Switzerland Italy and Germany. Two of his most successful worksThe Prairie andThe Red Rover were published in 1827. He returned to Otsego Hall in 1834 and after a series of relatively unsuccessful books of essays travel sketches and history he returned to fiction - and to Leatherstocking - withThe Pathfinder (1840) andThe Deerslayer (1841). In his last decade he faced declining popularity brought on in part by his waspish attacks on critics and political opponents. Just before his death in 1851 an edition of his works led to a reappraisal of his fiction and somewhat restored his reputation as the first of American writers. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter IMine ear is open and my heart prepared The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold- Say is my kingdom lost? Richard II III.ii. 93-95.It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist and the trained European who fought at his side frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. But emulating the patience and self-denial of the practised native warriors they learned to overcome every difficulty and it would seem that in time there was no recess of the woods so dark nor any secret place so lovely that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe.Perhaps no district throughout the wide extent of the intermediate frontiers can furnish a livelier picture of Angered by the values of his materialistic society, Hawk-eye lives apart from the other white men, sharing the solitude and sublimity of the wilderness with his Mohican Indian friend, Chingachgook. As the savageries of war test these exiled men, they agree to guide two sisters in search of their father through hostile Indian country – even if it means risking everything. An enduring American classic, <i>The Last of the Mohicans</i> is a fast-paced portrait of fierce individualism and courage, set against massacres, raids, battles and a doomed love affair. It is also the unforgettable story of the friendship between two men.