Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free
Author: James Fenimore Cooper
gentleman, surrounded by his loving wife and family, and benevolently engaged in civic activities and in the public life of his county and state.
Financial pressures caused an estrangement from the De Lancey family in 1818 when Susan’s brothers, afraid Cooper might mortgage or sell the property, changed the legal status of their sister’s Scarsdale farm, where Susan and James and their children were then living, to remove it from Cooper’s control. Cooper broke off relations with the De Lanceys as a result and moved his family to New York City. He tried a number of business ventures, including buying a whaling ship and sending it off on a South American voyage to harvest whale oil. Through this venture he gained an intimate knowledge of the whaling business that showed up in his seafaring novels. All of Cooper’s business ventures, however, proved to be fruitless, and probably worsened his financial situation. He was not a good businessman.
The story of how Cooper turned to writing, his strangest and most unlikely entrepreneurial venture, has been told many times but most authoritatively by his daughter Susan:
A new novel had been brought from England in the last monthly packet; it was, I think, one of Mrs. Opie’s, or one of that school.... It must have been very trashy; after a chapter or two he threw it aside, exclaiming, “I could write a better book than that myself.” Our mother laughed at the idea, as the height of absurdity—he who disliked writing even a letter, that he should write a book!! He persisted in his declaration, however, and almost immediately wrote the first pages of a tale, not yet named, the same laid in England, as a matter of course (Susan Cooper, “Small Family Memoir,” p. 38).
The resulting novel, Precaution (1820), Cooper’s first, is a “novel of manners” set in England with a plot that closely resembles Jane Austen’s Persuasion, but it also bears heavy doses of the didactic style characteristic of British author Amelia Opie. Cooper read the draft of the novel one evening to the John Jay family under the pretense that it was the work of a young author he had discovered. Encouraged by his friends’ reactions, he proceeded to publish the novel, anonymously, in both America and England. The work did poorly in America but enjoyed modest sales in England where it was taken to be the work of an Englishwoman. Cooper threw himself immediately into the work on his second novel, The Spy, with the characteristic creative energy that was to be his trademark, finishing the first sixty pages in three days. But it proved harder to do an original rather than an imitative work, and it took him six months to complete the novel. The Spy was published in 1821 and brought him instant fame. It tells the story of a patriot who masquerades as a Loyalist but who is actually working for independence. In the end the hero shows his nobility by refusing to accept payment for his spying services. The subtext of the novel is the unity of the American gentry around the ideals of patriotism, independence from Britain, the preservation of the existing social order, and the rejection of radical ideas proposed by groups seeking to overthrow current institutions. Following the publication of The Spy were The Pioneers (1823), the first of the Leatherstocking series ; The Pilot ( 1823 ) , the first of what would be eleven seafaring novels ; Lionel Lincoln (1825); and, before Cooper’s departure for Europe with his family, The Last of the Mohicans (1826). Mohicans was published to great acclaim and became an immediate bestseller. It became his most widely read and successful work. The Prairie, the last part of which Cooper finished while in Europe, and The Red Rover both appeared in 1827, consolidating his reputation as a world-renowned author. He settled in Paris, where he was sought out and feted in Parisian literary circles.
Cooper gave various reasons in letters to friends to explain his departure for
Financial pressures caused an estrangement from the De Lancey family in 1818 when Susan’s brothers, afraid Cooper might mortgage or sell the property, changed the legal status of their sister’s Scarsdale farm, where Susan and James and their children were then living, to remove it from Cooper’s control. Cooper broke off relations with the De Lanceys as a result and moved his family to New York City. He tried a number of business ventures, including buying a whaling ship and sending it off on a South American voyage to harvest whale oil. Through this venture he gained an intimate knowledge of the whaling business that showed up in his seafaring novels. All of Cooper’s business ventures, however, proved to be fruitless, and probably worsened his financial situation. He was not a good businessman.
The story of how Cooper turned to writing, his strangest and most unlikely entrepreneurial venture, has been told many times but most authoritatively by his daughter Susan:
A new novel had been brought from England in the last monthly packet; it was, I think, one of Mrs. Opie’s, or one of that school.... It must have been very trashy; after a chapter or two he threw it aside, exclaiming, “I could write a better book than that myself.” Our mother laughed at the idea, as the height of absurdity—he who disliked writing even a letter, that he should write a book!! He persisted in his declaration, however, and almost immediately wrote the first pages of a tale, not yet named, the same laid in England, as a matter of course (Susan Cooper, “Small Family Memoir,” p. 38).
The resulting novel, Precaution (1820), Cooper’s first, is a “novel of manners” set in England with a plot that closely resembles Jane Austen’s Persuasion, but it also bears heavy doses of the didactic style characteristic of British author Amelia Opie. Cooper read the draft of the novel one evening to the John Jay family under the pretense that it was the work of a young author he had discovered. Encouraged by his friends’ reactions, he proceeded to publish the novel, anonymously, in both America and England. The work did poorly in America but enjoyed modest sales in England where it was taken to be the work of an Englishwoman. Cooper threw himself immediately into the work on his second novel, The Spy, with the characteristic creative energy that was to be his trademark, finishing the first sixty pages in three days. But it proved harder to do an original rather than an imitative work, and it took him six months to complete the novel. The Spy was published in 1821 and brought him instant fame. It tells the story of a patriot who masquerades as a Loyalist but who is actually working for independence. In the end the hero shows his nobility by refusing to accept payment for his spying services. The subtext of the novel is the unity of the American gentry around the ideals of patriotism, independence from Britain, the preservation of the existing social order, and the rejection of radical ideas proposed by groups seeking to overthrow current institutions. Following the publication of The Spy were The Pioneers (1823), the first of the Leatherstocking series ; The Pilot ( 1823 ) , the first of what would be eleven seafaring novels ; Lionel Lincoln (1825); and, before Cooper’s departure for Europe with his family, The Last of the Mohicans (1826). Mohicans was published to great acclaim and became an immediate bestseller. It became his most widely read and successful work. The Prairie, the last part of which Cooper finished while in Europe, and The Red Rover both appeared in 1827, consolidating his reputation as a world-renowned author. He settled in Paris, where he was sought out and feted in Parisian literary circles.
Cooper gave various reasons in letters to friends to explain his departure for
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