Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free Page A

Europe: educational opportunities for his children (the family diligently studied French for a year prior to departure), the chance to relax, his desire to see something of the world, and others. He did not mention what was surely another major motivation: his desire to solidify his finances. Although Cooper was widely read in Europe, international copyright laws were so lax that pirated editions of his works flooded the European markets. At the time of his departure for Europe, he had realized few financial gains despite his fame. In every country he visited, Cooper met with publishers and arranged for authoritative editions of his works and/or new translations. To induce readers to buy these editions, they often included a new commentary or preface by the author. Cooper was always fascinated with and closely attentive to the details of publishing. He appeared to have a shrewd business sense in this area, and struck favorable bargains with his publishers (while always being loyal, conscientious, and scrupulous in his dealings with them). Meanwhile, he continued to work hard, producing a substantial body of new work that included three novels and travel volumes on England, France, and Italy based on his copious notes. By the end of his stay in Europe he had achieved the financial security for his family that he had long sought.
    In 1834, back in America and shocked by what he saw as changes for the worse in his country, Cooper published the pamphlet A Letter to His Countrymen, in which he announced his retirement as a novelist, criticized excessive American deference to foreign opinions and tastes, and defended the policies of President Andrew Jackson against his Whig opponents. Cooper was subjected to a torrent of abuse from the Whig press as a result. This was not a happy period for the embattled Cooper. He sank into what we would now call a depression but continued to work at a furious pace, turning out a travel book, The Monikins (1835), and five subsequent travel volumes. None of these proved to be a success, however. After 1836 he became virtually a recluse, seeing only his family and a very few close friends, and spending his time at his old ancestral home in Cooperstown. The repurchase of his family mansion used up a large part of the savings he had painstakingly accumulated and, along with the recession of 1837 , which caused real estate values to plummet, helped to bring about a new cycle of financial strain for Cooper. It was during this period that he began the many lawsuits that were to occupy his attention for the next decade.
    Cooper’s declaration that he would abandon novel writing proved to be incorrect, however, for he could no more give up writing novels than Natty Bumppo could abandon scouting. But the novels he produced in 1838, Homeward Bound and Home as Found, were neither commercial nor critical successes. The lawsuits, the financial pressures from the recession, which deepened into a depression, and his various unwise business speculations did not seem to interfere with Cooper’s ability to work during this period, however. Rather, he appeared to gather new zest. It was in this period, battling his neighbors and engaged in lawsuits against the Whig publishers, that he decided to bring back Natty Bumppo (who had been laid to rest as an octogenarian in The Prairie) . Cooper went on to produce two of his best novels, The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841), the final two of the Leatherstocking series.
    It has always been hard for critics to find unity in Cooper’s diverse body of work, and this is true even for the five Leatherstocking novels. While most Cooper critics have considered these to be his best works, they have not found a coherence or sense of wholeness, or a unity of style or outlook, in the five novels. 9 The Pioneers is a fictionalized version of the historical founding of Cooperstown and events of the mid-1790s and is probably Cooper’s most “radical” work, in the sense of