The Deerslayer

This collector-quality edition includes the complete text of James Fenimore Cooper's classic frontier action tale in a freshly edited and newly typeset edition. With a large 7.44"x9.69" page size, this Summit Classic edition is printed on hefty bright white paper with a fully laminated cover featuring an original full color design. Page headers and proper placement of footnotes exemplify the attention to detail given this volume. "The Deerslayer" was published in 1841, the last published of Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales" saga. Chronologically, it is set before the other tales and thus first in the series. In recent years it has been viewed as the "prequel" to the Leatherstocking Tales. "The Deerslayer" is of course Cooper's indomitable frontier hero, Natty Bumppo, sometimes called "Hawkeye," "Pathfinder," "Leatherstocking" or the Scout, seen here as a young frontiersman in the vicinity of New York's Lake Otsego, barely staying ahead of the advance of the British colonial settlements. Against the background of Cooper's vivid descriptions of the frontier and the wilderness, the Deerslayer and his loyal friend Chingachgook become embroiled in the conflict between the Huron tribe and Tom Hutter, the keeper of a deep secret, and his two daughters, Judith and Hetty, living on a houseboat on the lake, and Henry "Hurry Harry" March. Through a series of forest skirmishes, flights, escapes, and rescues, Cooper creates a complex picture of the inhabitants of the frontier, red and white. Although criticized many years after the fact for his "stereotypical" characters, clearly Chingachgook is a more noble figure than either Hutter or March, and Bumppo explains that some of the conduct of the Indians regarded by whites as "savage" or "brutal," such as scalp taking, is part of the cultural "natural gifts" of the red man, but does in fact constitute unwarranted savagery when practiced by whites such as Hutter and March, as their culture has no such history. With the publication of "The Spy" in 1821, James Fenimore Cooper became an international figure and the first authentic American novelist, free of the forms and conventions of the British fiction of the day. With "The Leatherstocking Tales" he became the first great interpreter of the American experience, chronicling the adventures of the indomitable Natty Bumppo, known variously as "Hawkeye," "Deerslayer," "Pathfinder," "Leatherstocking" and other names, from the colonial Indian wars through the early expansion into the vast western plains. Published between 1823 and 1841, beginning with "The Pioneers" and ending with "The Deerslayer," the tales are set against historical events ranging from 1740 to 1804, with Cooper taking some literary license with the actual chronology of events, probably to avoid having Bumppo ranging the Great Plains at over 90 years of age. This edition of "The Deerslayer" is the last in a new series of the complete Leatherstocking Tales to be released by Summit Classic Press in 2012.