Novel
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper · 1826
Opening lines
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.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Summer 1757, in the forests bordering Lake George. Cora and Alice, daughters of Colonel Munro, who commands an English fort besieged by the French, try to reach him under the escort of a major and a singing master, guided by the Huron Magua, who deliberately leads them astray. A white hunter and his two Mohican companions, father and son, take charge of them and recognise in the guide a traitor who pursues the colonel with an old grudge. The march becomes a chase through woods where every trail can be read.
Context
The novel was published in Philadelphia in February 1826. It is the second written of a series of five books whose hero is the same hunter, and the second also in the order of the narrative. The previous year the author had guided a group of Englishmen, including Edward Stanley, the future Earl of Derby, through the Adirondacks and as far as the falls at Glens Falls, where he sets a famous scene. The French translation by Auguste-Jean-Baptiste Defauconpret appeared the same year, and the book has since remained one of the most often reissued and adapted in French.
Who it is for
A long adventure novel, in ample language and with emphatic dialogue, whose French editions for young readers are often abridged or adapted.
Prizes and reception
The most popular of the five novels in the cycle; its success immediately surpassed that of all its author's earlier books.
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