The Pathfinder: Or the Inland Sea (Leatherstocking Tale)

by James Fenimore Cooper (Author), Kay House (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $3.29

  Cooper undertook a hazardous experiment in resurrecting one of his most popular characters, for he had killed off Bumppo in his previous incarnation. This book is noted as a classic account of the American wilderness. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $4.37

  The Pathfinder (1840), the fourth of Cooper's five Leather-Stocking Tales , is a naval story set on the Great Lakes of the 1750s. Based upon his own experience as midshipman on Lake Ontario in 1808-9, the novel revives Natty Bumppo - who had died in The Prairie - and casts him, with his friend, the Mohican chief Chingachgook, among Tuscarora and Iroquois Indians, and into conflicts over land and love. Natty's courtship of Mabel Denham aligns Cooper's interest in American history with his concern for social development. An account of Europeans, Indians and colonials on the American frontier, the novel is also a critique of Jacksonian democracy and a meditation on the course of American civilization. Together with The Deerslayer (1841), this novel summarizes Cooper's evolving view of his culture. The text of this edition is that established by Richard Dilworth Rust, and this annotated volume includes both a critical introduction and an historical essay by Marybeth McMahon which places the novel in the context of the French and Indian War.