James Fenimore Cooper

Presents an illustrated edition of the American classic in which Hawkeye, a scout, and his Mohican companions, Chigachgook and Uncas, lead a small band of Americans fleeing from the British and their Indian allies during the French and Indian War.

The Spy: a Tale of the Neutral Ground is the debut novel of James Fenimore Cooper, originally published in 1821. Cooper’s novels on life at the frontier established an entirely new genre in American literature, with The Last of the Mohicans considered as his masterpiece. The Spy is a fast-paced story of espionage set during the Revolutionary War, where the plot unfolds on neutral ground. The protagonist Harvey Birch, who appears to be a British...

An exciting tale of nautical adventure on the waters of colonial New York Harbor. Chiefly set on the waters and islands of New York Harbor in the early years of the 1700s, James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Water-Witch (1830) paints a vivid picture of life in the little colonial port. It was familiar territory for Cooper, who a century later had served as a junior officer on board an eighteen-gun sloop-of-war stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That...

Set in 1793 and 1794, The Pioneers tracks the changes of a small town called Templeton, built on the advancing frontier of New York. Natty Bumppo, a hero raised by Native Americans, lives in a cabin, secluded in a forest near Templeton. As the Christmas Eve snow falls, Natty, more commonly known as Leatherstocking, embarks on a tense hunt for a deer. As he tracks the deer down, he runs into Judge Marmaduke Temple, the man who founded the town of Temple....

An exciting Revolutionary War tale of double agents and counterespionage in New York State in 1780. A year after his imitative first novel Precaution (1820) enjoyed only modest success, James Fenimore Cooper penned The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground, a Revolutionary War narrative initiating the American historical romance, a novel and a genre that quickly put to rest the British critic Sydney Smith's 1820 quip, "In the four corners of the globe,...

This 1843 novel is set in the Butternut Valley of New York State. In 1765, Captain Hugh Willoughby leaves the British army and sets up a colony called Hutted Knoll with his American-born wife. Ten years later, when America declares its independence from Britain, Willoughby and his son, Robert, will find their loyalties torn.

Natty Bumppo, the Leatherstocking, now on the threshold of old age finds his way of life challenged as the land he has roamed becomes private property, and the laws of man supplant the laws of nature.

"The Prairie" is a historical novel by Cooper featuring Natty Bumppo. In this westward expansion story, the fictitious frontier hero Bumppo is never called by his name but is instead referred to as "the trapper" or "the old man." Chronologically, "The Prairie" is the fifth and final installment of the "Leatherstocking Tales," though it was published before "The Pathfinder" and "The Deerslayer." Journey with Natty in the final year of his life as...

Set during King Philip's War, this novel takes place in the frontier community of Wish-Ton-Wish. After many years of war between the natives and the English settlers, a family is split between the two sides. The "wept" is a young girl, Ruth Heathcote, who, abducted by Native Americans, grows to marry their leader, Conanchet. Cooper contrasts the bloodthirsty piety of the Puritan preacher Meek Wolfe with the nobility of Conanchet.

This novel is a Revolutionary tale with a Loyalist American hero.