The Last of the Mohicans

The second of Cooper's five Leatherstocking Tales, this is the one which has consistently captured the imagination of generations since it was first published in 1826. Its success lies partly in the historical role Cooper gives to his Indian characters, against the grain of accumulated racial hostility, and partly in his evocation of the wild beautiful landscapes of North America which the French and the British fought to control throughout the eighteenth century. At the centre of the novel is the celebrated 'Massacre' of British troops and their families by Indian allies of the French at Fort William Henry in 1757. Around this historical event, Cooper built a romantic fiction of captivity, sexuality, and heroism, in which the destiny of the Mohicans Chingachgook and his son Uncas is inseparable from the lives of Alice and Cora Munro and of Hawkeye the frontier scout. The controlled, elaborate writing gives natural pace to the violence of the novel's action: like the nature whose plundering Copper laments, the books placid surfaces conceal inexplicable and deathly forces.

ISBN 0199538190   Weight (grammes) 317 ISBN13 9780199538195 (What's this?)   Published in Oxford Publisher Oxford University Press   Series title Oxford World's Classics Imprint Oxford University Press   Previous ISBN 9780192835055 Format Paperback   Height (mm) 195 Publication date 11 Dec 2008   Width (mm) 127 DEWEY 813.2   Spine width (mm) 21 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level General Pages 464   Alternative ISBN 9781590071229 Volumes 1

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