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The Pioneers (Oxford World's Classics)
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Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Author: James Fenimore Cooper
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
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Our Price:
You Save: $ 10.95 ( 100% )
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Author: James Fenimore Cooper
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Average Customer Rating:
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The Pioneers (Oxford World's Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.2
EAN: 9780192836670
ISBN: 0192836676
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 496
Publication Date: 2000-02-24
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.2
EAN: 9780192836670
ISBN: 0192836676
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 496
Publication Date: 2000-02-24
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Editorial Review of The Pioneers (Oxford World's Classics)
The first of the five Leatherstocking Tales, The Pioneers is perhaps the most realistic and beautiful of the series. Drawing on his own experiences, Cooper brilliantly describes Frontier life, providing a fascinating backdrop to the real heart of the novel--the competing claims to land ownership of Native Americans and settlers. This edition follows the publication of The Last of the Mohicans in the World's Classics series and uses the standard text approved by the Modern Language Association.
Customer Reviews of The Pioneers (Oxford World's Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Leatherstocking Tales: The Pioneers
Review: 'The Pioneers' is subtitled 'a descriptive tale' so don't say you weren't warned. Cooper's first book in the Leatherstocking Tales (the fourth chronologically) lacks anything but the thinnest plot for most of its pages. Instead, there are lengthy descriptions designed to give the reader an idea of frontier life (clearly sanitized for his contemporary audience).
Frankly, most modern readers will find 'The Pioneers' aimless and flat-out dull. I give it two stars out of respect to Cooper's intent: he was not aiming to write a fully plotted book. Yet, even as 'a descriptive tale' the book falls a bit short because it's not clear what Cooper intends to describe. Rather than focusing on frontier life, there is a lot of exposition about his characters, most of whom I found paper thin and/or annoying.
On the other hand, Cooper's theme that man's love of the wilderness as the very thing that leads to its destruction is clearer in 'The Pioneers' than in any of the other books. There are a couple of powerful scenes depicting the vast waste of settlers taming the wilderness. Massive trees destroyed senselessly when a little care would do as well, and a scene filled with mindless slaughter of wildlife. While the leader of the settlement mouths platitudes about protecting the wilderness, he actually does little or nothing.
It is through this theme that the elderly characters of Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook are most effective. Here called the Leatherstocking and Mohegan, the pair represent the fading American frontier. Both watch helplessly as laws and civilization subvert the wilderness they have lived in and loved all their lives. Leatherstocking finds himself in direct conflict with these laws merely by hunting. Mohegan is especially poignant if you have read the books in chronological order. The proud Indian warrior/hero is now a christianized alcoholic. The cause for his fall is pretty clearly laid at the doorstep of the growing nation which displaced and destroyed his people.
Unfortunately, these powerful characterizations make up a very small portion of the book. The bulk is given over to tepid Victorian-styled dramatics, complete with stilted plotting around long lost relatives revealed deus ex machina to resolve the corners Cooper writes himself into. Most modern readers will find these elements very cheesy. When Cooper does get around to the plot, he delivers some solid action in the last fifth of the book with some truly cinematic scenes (Leatherstocking leaping through a forest fire to rescue several key characters). However, Cooper renders his denoumont anticlimactic by following it with a silly battle and some revelations you never saw coming (not in a good way). There is a ray of brilliant writing at the end when, in the final scene, Leatherstocking leaves the remains of his home forever to escape the encroaching civilization.
Overall, I found this book only marginally interesting, and it feels like Cooper stumbled/lucked into the intriguing Leatherstocking and Chingachgook characters by accident. It's like he realizes halfway through the book that these characters are way more interesting than the ones he's been focused on. As such, 'The Pioneers' should only be read if you truly want to get the entire five books under your belt. Otherwise, start with 'The Last of the Mohicans.'
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Written for his own pleasure, not yours.
Review: This is, I believe, James Fenimore Cooper's first published work. Before his writings, there were really no great American writers writing stories based in America. Therefore, Cooper is often considered the father of "American" American literature. His writings helped shape the image people all over the world had of America.
To me, this novel was a disappointment. I was hoping for something a bit more gripping and exciting, but what I found was a sort of feel-good, worry-free tour of a small town in upstate New York with amusing, but rather innocent and uninspiring characters. While there are a number of scenes that present the characters with real and substantial dangers, the way they are written and the manner in which Cooper's characters are dealt with throughout the book, leaves the reader with little doubt that things will turn out fine in the end. Maybe I'm being too critical, but I just couldn't really get excited about this story.
This book introduces Cooper's most famous character, Leatherstocking, who appears in numerous other Cooper tales (The Last of the Mohicans, The Deerslayer, The Pathfinder, and The Prarie). In THE PIONEERS, Natty Bumppo is already an old man that really only wishes to live out his life in peace. His character and motivations remain somewhat of a mystery throughout this book, and it is not clear whether Cooper felt him to be a character that he would write more about all along or only after this book was published.
In Cooper's introduction to this book, he really kind of bashes the story, claiming that he wrote it for himself and didn't really consider the importance of a broad appeal for his audience. The setting and characters represent the town he grew up in (the town his father founded) and his own family and friends. This admission together with the undeniably slow first half of the book may have helped sour my view of the whole. While some of the characters, notably Elizabeth Temple and Oliver Edwards, are extremely likable and well-written, they just weren't enough to make me love this story.
I like some of the things about Cooper's writing, so I'll give his other books a try, but I wasn't too impressed with this one.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A short review of James Fenimore Cooper the Pioneers
Review: Classical Cooper work, it can't be beat. The state of New York is expanding, and the make up of the classes is expounded on. This is pioneer budding New York with the wilderness slowly turning its great land holdings into a people orientended land. This is the land our forefathers knew.
The story isn't just about land, its about the people that inhabit it. Our hero is a Long Rifle. A man that was part of the landscape long before people were settling it. The times are changing and he has taken a young man under his wing, one with his own abilities. They both hold a secret known only to themselves.
The cast of characters besides our two hero's, include the Squire, the Dr., the Squires black male servent, and of course a young woman, and many others. From the gracious living of the upper class, to the world of our heros, which is the forest, you won't want to put this book down. The events and lives of people in that century, cutting into what had been wilderness is covered, as only Cooper can.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: When preachers enter the wilderness, game grows scarce.
Review: It is Christmas eve 1793 in Central New York's pioneer village of Templeton. Although only seven years old, Templeton boasts of 50 structures, two lawyers, a doctor and a sampling of tradesmen and farmers. The town sits at the lower end of Lake Otsego and timber abounds, though the recent settlers cut it down without a thought for fuel and farmland as if it would last forever.
Most of the native American Indians have moved west, having sold their land to the King, who then lost it to the successful American rebels. But title to local lands flows from an old Royal grant. And there is a shadow on the claim of the town's richest man, Judge Marmaduke Temple to own the many thousands of acres that he is systematically selling off to immigrants of many ethnic backgrounds.
Before the Revolution the Judge had a school friend, son and heir of a well off English military officer, Major Oliver Effingham. This friendship made the Judge's fortune. Came the war, however, and the friends fought for opposite sides. The Judge's side won and the Englishman lost all. The Judge then bought up his onetime friend's lands at auction. Was this greed or deliberate protection of his friend's interests? Read the novel to the end through many mysteries and twists and find out! The Major, who lived in Connecticut, disappeared in the fog of revolutionary war, leaving a son Edward and grandson Edward Oliver.
A "mysterious" young stranger arrives on the lake. He calls himself Oliver Edwards and he lives in a cabin with another white man, Natty Bumppo, a man of 67 and an even older native American Christian called variously Chingachgook, Big Serpent and Indian John. On Christmas eve, this trio is out hunting a deer. Judge Temple in a sleigh is driving his teenage daughter home from years of study in New York City. The Judge shoots at a fleeing deer, as do Natty and Oliver. Oliver's shot kills the beast, the judge's misses, hitting Oliver in the shoulder. But when the sleigh's team bolts, Oliver saves the party from danger, including his beautiful daughter Elizabeth.
Has this plot beginning caught your attention? Then read on. For some initially unclear reason relating to land title, young Oliver obviously hates the judge who hires him as secretary. Later Natty and Indian John kill a deer out of season. The law puts Natty in the stocks and then in jail. But he escapes with the help of his two friends. And through thick and thin affection grows between Oliver and Elizabeth.
The novel raises questions about who owns America: God, the Indians, the Dutch, the English, friends of the Indians like Natty? Civilization arrives in the form of Templeton (today's Coopertown where author James Fenimore grew up). Civilization brings law and order but also personal power, so much that it can be abused. In the end injustice forces Natty to leave and head for the western prairies. He has seen too many changes, too much loss of space to stores and churches. He says to Reverend Mr Grant:
"... I see, times be altering in these mountains from what they was thirty years ago. ... Heigh-ho! I never know'd preaching come into a settlement but it made game scarce, and raised the price of gunpowder." (Ch. XII)
But readers who trust in God are rewarded when at least partial justice is done by story's end to everyone's claims to properties and rights.
THE PIONEERS did for tourism to the Finger Lakes of New York what Sir Walter Scott's LADY OF THE LAKE did for the Trossachs of Scotland. Fenimore Cooper's novel is a salute to old multinnational New York just before Puritans wandering in from Massachusetts put their homogenizing stamp on an easier going culture. -OOO-
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Growing Pains of a Nation
Review: I really enjoyed this book and how it portrayed the growing pains of this great country. Natty Bumppo is one of my favorite literary characters! He's not afraid to stand up for what he sees is right and when he understands that he cannot maintain his way of life where he is, he decides his own fate. He is noble yet feisty. A true romantic hero!
Yes, this novel does require patience from the reader (which most classic works of literature do), but for me, the payoff was worth it. It's not my favorite Leatherstocking Tale, but I do recommend it.
Review Summary: The Leatherstocking Tales: The Pioneers
Review: 'The Pioneers' is subtitled 'a descriptive tale' so don't say you weren't warned. Cooper's first book in the Leatherstocking Tales (the fourth chronologically) lacks anything but the thinnest plot for most of its pages. Instead, there are lengthy descriptions designed to give the reader an idea of frontier life (clearly sanitized for his contemporary audience).
Frankly, most modern readers will find 'The Pioneers' aimless and flat-out dull. I give it two stars out of respect to Cooper's intent: he was not aiming to write a fully plotted book. Yet, even as 'a descriptive tale' the book falls a bit short because it's not clear what Cooper intends to describe. Rather than focusing on frontier life, there is a lot of exposition about his characters, most of whom I found paper thin and/or annoying.
On the other hand, Cooper's theme that man's love of the wilderness as the very thing that leads to its destruction is clearer in 'The Pioneers' than in any of the other books. There are a couple of powerful scenes depicting the vast waste of settlers taming the wilderness. Massive trees destroyed senselessly when a little care would do as well, and a scene filled with mindless slaughter of wildlife. While the leader of the settlement mouths platitudes about protecting the wilderness, he actually does little or nothing.
It is through this theme that the elderly characters of Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook are most effective. Here called the Leatherstocking and Mohegan, the pair represent the fading American frontier. Both watch helplessly as laws and civilization subvert the wilderness they have lived in and loved all their lives. Leatherstocking finds himself in direct conflict with these laws merely by hunting. Mohegan is especially poignant if you have read the books in chronological order. The proud Indian warrior/hero is now a christianized alcoholic. The cause for his fall is pretty clearly laid at the doorstep of the growing nation which displaced and destroyed his people.
Unfortunately, these powerful characterizations make up a very small portion of the book. The bulk is given over to tepid Victorian-styled dramatics, complete with stilted plotting around long lost relatives revealed deus ex machina to resolve the corners Cooper writes himself into. Most modern readers will find these elements very cheesy. When Cooper does get around to the plot, he delivers some solid action in the last fifth of the book with some truly cinematic scenes (Leatherstocking leaping through a forest fire to rescue several key characters). However, Cooper renders his denoumont anticlimactic by following it with a silly battle and some revelations you never saw coming (not in a good way). There is a ray of brilliant writing at the end when, in the final scene, Leatherstocking leaves the remains of his home forever to escape the encroaching civilization.
Overall, I found this book only marginally interesting, and it feels like Cooper stumbled/lucked into the intriguing Leatherstocking and Chingachgook characters by accident. It's like he realizes halfway through the book that these characters are way more interesting than the ones he's been focused on. As such, 'The Pioneers' should only be read if you truly want to get the entire five books under your belt. Otherwise, start with 'The Last of the Mohicans.'
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Written for his own pleasure, not yours.
Review: This is, I believe, James Fenimore Cooper's first published work. Before his writings, there were really no great American writers writing stories based in America. Therefore, Cooper is often considered the father of "American" American literature. His writings helped shape the image people all over the world had of America.
To me, this novel was a disappointment. I was hoping for something a bit more gripping and exciting, but what I found was a sort of feel-good, worry-free tour of a small town in upstate New York with amusing, but rather innocent and uninspiring characters. While there are a number of scenes that present the characters with real and substantial dangers, the way they are written and the manner in which Cooper's characters are dealt with throughout the book, leaves the reader with little doubt that things will turn out fine in the end. Maybe I'm being too critical, but I just couldn't really get excited about this story.
This book introduces Cooper's most famous character, Leatherstocking, who appears in numerous other Cooper tales (The Last of the Mohicans, The Deerslayer, The Pathfinder, and The Prarie). In THE PIONEERS, Natty Bumppo is already an old man that really only wishes to live out his life in peace. His character and motivations remain somewhat of a mystery throughout this book, and it is not clear whether Cooper felt him to be a character that he would write more about all along or only after this book was published.
In Cooper's introduction to this book, he really kind of bashes the story, claiming that he wrote it for himself and didn't really consider the importance of a broad appeal for his audience. The setting and characters represent the town he grew up in (the town his father founded) and his own family and friends. This admission together with the undeniably slow first half of the book may have helped sour my view of the whole. While some of the characters, notably Elizabeth Temple and Oliver Edwards, are extremely likable and well-written, they just weren't enough to make me love this story.
I like some of the things about Cooper's writing, so I'll give his other books a try, but I wasn't too impressed with this one.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A short review of James Fenimore Cooper the Pioneers
Review: Classical Cooper work, it can't be beat. The state of New York is expanding, and the make up of the classes is expounded on. This is pioneer budding New York with the wilderness slowly turning its great land holdings into a people orientended land. This is the land our forefathers knew.
The story isn't just about land, its about the people that inhabit it. Our hero is a Long Rifle. A man that was part of the landscape long before people were settling it. The times are changing and he has taken a young man under his wing, one with his own abilities. They both hold a secret known only to themselves.
The cast of characters besides our two hero's, include the Squire, the Dr., the Squires black male servent, and of course a young woman, and many others. From the gracious living of the upper class, to the world of our heros, which is the forest, you won't want to put this book down. The events and lives of people in that century, cutting into what had been wilderness is covered, as only Cooper can.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: When preachers enter the wilderness, game grows scarce.
Review: It is Christmas eve 1793 in Central New York's pioneer village of Templeton. Although only seven years old, Templeton boasts of 50 structures, two lawyers, a doctor and a sampling of tradesmen and farmers. The town sits at the lower end of Lake Otsego and timber abounds, though the recent settlers cut it down without a thought for fuel and farmland as if it would last forever.
Most of the native American Indians have moved west, having sold their land to the King, who then lost it to the successful American rebels. But title to local lands flows from an old Royal grant. And there is a shadow on the claim of the town's richest man, Judge Marmaduke Temple to own the many thousands of acres that he is systematically selling off to immigrants of many ethnic backgrounds.
Before the Revolution the Judge had a school friend, son and heir of a well off English military officer, Major Oliver Effingham. This friendship made the Judge's fortune. Came the war, however, and the friends fought for opposite sides. The Judge's side won and the Englishman lost all. The Judge then bought up his onetime friend's lands at auction. Was this greed or deliberate protection of his friend's interests? Read the novel to the end through many mysteries and twists and find out! The Major, who lived in Connecticut, disappeared in the fog of revolutionary war, leaving a son Edward and grandson Edward Oliver.
A "mysterious" young stranger arrives on the lake. He calls himself Oliver Edwards and he lives in a cabin with another white man, Natty Bumppo, a man of 67 and an even older native American Christian called variously Chingachgook, Big Serpent and Indian John. On Christmas eve, this trio is out hunting a deer. Judge Temple in a sleigh is driving his teenage daughter home from years of study in New York City. The Judge shoots at a fleeing deer, as do Natty and Oliver. Oliver's shot kills the beast, the judge's misses, hitting Oliver in the shoulder. But when the sleigh's team bolts, Oliver saves the party from danger, including his beautiful daughter Elizabeth.
Has this plot beginning caught your attention? Then read on. For some initially unclear reason relating to land title, young Oliver obviously hates the judge who hires him as secretary. Later Natty and Indian John kill a deer out of season. The law puts Natty in the stocks and then in jail. But he escapes with the help of his two friends. And through thick and thin affection grows between Oliver and Elizabeth.
The novel raises questions about who owns America: God, the Indians, the Dutch, the English, friends of the Indians like Natty? Civilization arrives in the form of Templeton (today's Coopertown where author James Fenimore grew up). Civilization brings law and order but also personal power, so much that it can be abused. In the end injustice forces Natty to leave and head for the western prairies. He has seen too many changes, too much loss of space to stores and churches. He says to Reverend Mr Grant:
"... I see, times be altering in these mountains from what they was thirty years ago. ... Heigh-ho! I never know'd preaching come into a settlement but it made game scarce, and raised the price of gunpowder." (Ch. XII)
But readers who trust in God are rewarded when at least partial justice is done by story's end to everyone's claims to properties and rights.
THE PIONEERS did for tourism to the Finger Lakes of New York what Sir Walter Scott's LADY OF THE LAKE did for the Trossachs of Scotland. Fenimore Cooper's novel is a salute to old multinnational New York just before Puritans wandering in from Massachusetts put their homogenizing stamp on an easier going culture. -OOO-
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Growing Pains of a Nation
Review: I really enjoyed this book and how it portrayed the growing pains of this great country. Natty Bumppo is one of my favorite literary characters! He's not afraid to stand up for what he sees is right and when he understands that he cannot maintain his way of life where he is, he decides his own fate. He is noble yet feisty. A true romantic hero!
Yes, this novel does require patience from the reader (which most classic works of literature do), but for me, the payoff was worth it. It's not my favorite Leatherstocking Tale, but I do recommend it.