New Essays on The Last of the Mohicans

The Last of the Mohicans is the most widely read and internationally acclaimed of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales, and has traditionally been regarded as an exciting and well-made adventure story. In recent years, however, critics have found in this classic tale of colonial warfare deeper levels of meaning. In the introduction to this volume, H. Daniel Peck studies these developments by tracking critical responses to the novel from the time of its publication in 1826 to the present day. The essays that follow present contemporary re-assessments of The Last of the Mohicans from a variety of critical perspectives.

Preface; 1. Introduction H. Daniel Peck; 2. The widerness of words in The Last of the Mohicans Wayne Franklin; 3. From atrocity to requiem: history in The Last of the Mohicans Terence Martin; 4. How men and women wrote Indian stories Nina Baym; 5. Generation through violence: Cooper and the making of Americans Shirley Samuels; 6. The lesson of the massacre at Fort William Henry Robert Lawson-Peebles; Notes; Selected bibliography.