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The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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Author: James Fenimore Cooper
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Our Price: $7.95
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Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble Classics
Author: James Fenimore Cooper
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
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The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781593082116
ISBN: 1593082118
Label: Barnes & Noble Classics
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 608
Publication Date: 2005-07-01
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
Studio: Barnes & Noble Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781593082116
ISBN: 1593082118
Label: Barnes & Noble Classics
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 608
Publication Date: 2005-07-01
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
Studio: Barnes & Noble Classics
Editorial Review of The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
The Deerslayer, by James Fenimore Cooper, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
“Live by your own council. Be brave in the face of the unknown. Be always fair.”
-Natty Bumppo, The Deerslayer
One of the greatest heroes in American literature, Natty Bumppo is the rugged frontiersman of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels that includes The Last of the Mohicans and The Deerslayer. Although the final volume to be written, The Deerslayer is the first in the chronology of Natty Bumppo’s life, depicting the character as a young man testing himself in the wilderness, and against enemies, for the first time.
Set in the 1740’s just as the French and Indian wars have begun, the novel opens as Natty Bumppo—known as Deerslayer—and his friend Hurry Harry travel to Tom Hutter’s house in upstate New York. Hurry plans to marry Tom’s beautiful daughter Judith, while Deerslayer has come to help his close friend Chingachgook save his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, from the Huron Indians. When war breaks out, and Hurry and Tom are captured by Indians, Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them.
One of the earliest novels to be considered truly “American," The Deerslayer is a masterpiece of suspense, adventure, and romance.
-Natty Bumppo, The Deerslayer
One of the greatest heroes in American literature, Natty Bumppo is the rugged frontiersman of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels that includes The Last of the Mohicans and The Deerslayer. Although the final volume to be written, The Deerslayer is the first in the chronology of Natty Bumppo’s life, depicting the character as a young man testing himself in the wilderness, and against enemies, for the first time.
Set in the 1740’s just as the French and Indian wars have begun, the novel opens as Natty Bumppo—known as Deerslayer—and his friend Hurry Harry travel to Tom Hutter’s house in upstate New York. Hurry plans to marry Tom’s beautiful daughter Judith, while Deerslayer has come to help his close friend Chingachgook save his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, from the Huron Indians. When war breaks out, and Hurry and Tom are captured by Indians, Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them.
One of the earliest novels to be considered truly “American," The Deerslayer is a masterpiece of suspense, adventure, and romance.
Bruce L. R. Smith is a fellow at the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author or editor of sixteen scholarly books, and he continues to lecture widely in the United States and abroad.
Customer Reviews of The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness."
Review: In THE DEERSLAYER, Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo, mythic hero of the LEATHERSTOCKING TALES, only 18 or 20 years old, steps self-confidently into world literature. He will reappear in one sequel and three prequels by James Fenimore Cooper. Mr Bumppo begins the novel styled "Deerslayer," appropriate to a peaceful young man who lives like an Indian brave among the Christianized Delawares, and ends as "Hawkeye" after his first man-kill, when his reputation as a crack shot is solidified.
Europe is locked in its War of The Austrian Succession. That conflict has just spread to North America as "King George's War" (1744 - 1748). The fresh hostilities have unleashed Indian allies of both French and English. Natty's slightly older Delaware/Mohican friend Chingachgook, "the Great Serpent," is on the war-path pursuing the Hurons or Iroquois (Cooper is never clear about which, letting Natty call both tribes indiscriminately Mingos, to distinguish them from his beloved Delaware) who have whisked away his fiancee, Hist-oh-Hist, or Hist for short. The two inseparable friends had agreed before novel's beginning to meet up at Lake Otsego in Central New York to effect Hist's liberation.
Over seven days a little Trojan War is played out on lake and ashore, with Natty, a young Achilles, mythical North American sans pareil, in his first starring role. Experienced sailor Fenimore Cooper will later have his lake lore called savagely into question by another fresh water expert: Mississippi River pilot Mark Twain. Is Cooper so likely to have mistaken the size of the "ark" of old Floating Tom Hutter as Twain pretends? Would that small craft have been so slowly winched out of the river at the foot of Lake Otsego that a Mingo war party led by great chief Rivenoak would all drop like idiots into the water behind it when they leap down from a tree directly above it?
DEERSLAYER is a story of white-red relations, of the love of two Indians -- Chingachgook and Wist, of sailing and trapping and of that first time when two young warriors of different races kill their first human prey out legally on the international war-path. The young giant Hurry Harry loves Floating Tom's beautiful daughter Judith. She loves Deerslayer. Tom's simple-minded daughter Hetty loves Hurry Harry. The young Huron brave Catamount loves Hist. Love is in the air of the ferocious forest primeval. Natty Bumppo tells the disappointed Judith that he is happy to be her friend, but if he had a mother and father he would not leave them for her or any other woman.
British redcoats stationed not far away come to the relief of Tom's besieged family, happily slaughtering Huron women and children when given the chance. Hatred there is a-plenty between the races. When the slaughter is done and the players have departed, fifteen years pass. The lake returns to a solitude. Three inseparables, Natty and widowed Chingachgook along with Chingachgook's stripling son Uncas, then return to Lake Otsego, long deserted, to reminisce briefly. Ruins of old canoes, the ark and scattered bones of the buried remind of once fierce battles. One of Judith's old ribbons makes Deerslayer's heart beat faster. A new name has stuck to him, Hawkeye, earned by endless prowess with his already legendary great long rifle "Killdeer," Judith's present to him. Judith, we fear, makes an unhappy, immoral ending as the unwed lover of an unworthy nobleman.
Yet Otsego, also called Glimmerglass, was the first mountain lake Natty ever beheld and the most beautiful. It was a major source of the mighty Susquehannah River which would end in Chesapeake Bay. Deerslayer/Hawkeye would later return and dwell beside it for decades till driven out onto the western prairies by encroaching, destructive white civilization.
THE DEERSLAYERtale ends with a sober moralizing sentence worthy of Calvin tempered by Augustine:
"We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true; though happily for human nature, gleamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating, if not excusing its crimes. "(Ch. 32)
It is all there in THE DEERSLAYER: good and evil embedded in heart after human heart. Thank God for those occasional gleamings of human goodness, infrequent as they may be, especially among warriors and more pacific males! -OOO-
Review Summary: "We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness."
Review: In THE DEERSLAYER, Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo, mythic hero of the LEATHERSTOCKING TALES, only 18 or 20 years old, steps self-confidently into world literature. He will reappear in one sequel and three prequels by James Fenimore Cooper. Mr Bumppo begins the novel styled "Deerslayer," appropriate to a peaceful young man who lives like an Indian brave among the Christianized Delawares, and ends as "Hawkeye" after his first man-kill, when his reputation as a crack shot is solidified.
Europe is locked in its War of The Austrian Succession. That conflict has just spread to North America as "King George's War" (1744 - 1748). The fresh hostilities have unleashed Indian allies of both French and English. Natty's slightly older Delaware/Mohican friend Chingachgook, "the Great Serpent," is on the war-path pursuing the Hurons or Iroquois (Cooper is never clear about which, letting Natty call both tribes indiscriminately Mingos, to distinguish them from his beloved Delaware) who have whisked away his fiancee, Hist-oh-Hist, or Hist for short. The two inseparable friends had agreed before novel's beginning to meet up at Lake Otsego in Central New York to effect Hist's liberation.
Over seven days a little Trojan War is played out on lake and ashore, with Natty, a young Achilles, mythical North American sans pareil, in his first starring role. Experienced sailor Fenimore Cooper will later have his lake lore called savagely into question by another fresh water expert: Mississippi River pilot Mark Twain. Is Cooper so likely to have mistaken the size of the "ark" of old Floating Tom Hutter as Twain pretends? Would that small craft have been so slowly winched out of the river at the foot of Lake Otsego that a Mingo war party led by great chief Rivenoak would all drop like idiots into the water behind it when they leap down from a tree directly above it?
DEERSLAYER is a story of white-red relations, of the love of two Indians -- Chingachgook and Wist, of sailing and trapping and of that first time when two young warriors of different races kill their first human prey out legally on the international war-path. The young giant Hurry Harry loves Floating Tom's beautiful daughter Judith. She loves Deerslayer. Tom's simple-minded daughter Hetty loves Hurry Harry. The young Huron brave Catamount loves Hist. Love is in the air of the ferocious forest primeval. Natty Bumppo tells the disappointed Judith that he is happy to be her friend, but if he had a mother and father he would not leave them for her or any other woman.
British redcoats stationed not far away come to the relief of Tom's besieged family, happily slaughtering Huron women and children when given the chance. Hatred there is a-plenty between the races. When the slaughter is done and the players have departed, fifteen years pass. The lake returns to a solitude. Three inseparables, Natty and widowed Chingachgook along with Chingachgook's stripling son Uncas, then return to Lake Otsego, long deserted, to reminisce briefly. Ruins of old canoes, the ark and scattered bones of the buried remind of once fierce battles. One of Judith's old ribbons makes Deerslayer's heart beat faster. A new name has stuck to him, Hawkeye, earned by endless prowess with his already legendary great long rifle "Killdeer," Judith's present to him. Judith, we fear, makes an unhappy, immoral ending as the unwed lover of an unworthy nobleman.
Yet Otsego, also called Glimmerglass, was the first mountain lake Natty ever beheld and the most beautiful. It was a major source of the mighty Susquehannah River which would end in Chesapeake Bay. Deerslayer/Hawkeye would later return and dwell beside it for decades till driven out onto the western prairies by encroaching, destructive white civilization.
THE DEERSLAYERtale ends with a sober moralizing sentence worthy of Calvin tempered by Augustine:
"We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true; though happily for human nature, gleamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating, if not excusing its crimes. "(Ch. 32)
It is all there in THE DEERSLAYER: good and evil embedded in heart after human heart. Thank God for those occasional gleamings of human goodness, infrequent as they may be, especially among warriors and more pacific males! -OOO-