The Deerslayer

or, The First War-Path

Introduction by Leslie Fiedler

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Set during the French and Indian Wars, The Deerslayer vividly captures the essence of both the murderous humanity and the natural beauty that distinguished America’s founding. The last of Cooper’s famous Leatherstocking Tales, it is first chronologically in the frontier adventures of the backwoods scout Natty Bumppo. Amid a terrain largely inspired by Cooper’s own boyhood, Natty’s initiation in the moral codes of wilderness society is examined in what is, according to D. H. Lawrence, “the loveliest and best” of the Leatherstocking series.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the definitive text established by James Franklin Beard and James P. Elliott, which is the Approved Text of the Center for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association.

$22.00

July 9, 2002

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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.