Welcome back to the second edition of the Tales of the West blog series by me! Last week we explored a bit of a spooky story, The Legend of Sleepy Hallow by Washington Irving, so this week we're going to be divvying away from that kind of genre today. Instead of looking at a singular book, we're going to be looking at the Leatherstocking Tales novel series by James Fenimore Cooper, which follows a pioneer character and his journeys throughout his life across the five books in the series.
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Before we dive into the series itself, who exactly was the author James Fenimore Cooper? Well, he was born in New Jersey, but his family moved to Cooperstown, New York only about a year after his birth, which was a village that his father actually founded and named after them. Because of this, James spent many of his childhood years growing up there before he was sent to study at Yale College when he was 13. Unfortunately he was expelled about three years into his studies due to his michevious nature of pulling pranks, and instead switched his career focus by enlisting in the US Navy at about 19 years old after working as a simple seaman before. Upon resigning from the Navy in 1810, he met his to-be wife, and then began started to try his hand at writing and getting books published. James wrote two books before starting the Leatherstocking Tales, which were Precaution and The Spy.
Although James Fenimore Cooper wrote about 32 books within his lifetime, he was best known in his writings for the Leatherstocking Tales series, which he started writing after his popularity increased upon his release of his book The Spy, and is sometimes even referred to as the Father of the American Novel. He actually wrote the stories of the protagonist, Natty Bumppo, in a different order than the timeline of Natty's life, starting with The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie. There were also two books James wrote that related to characters within the original series as spin-offs.
Even thought it'd be a bit hard to sum up this whole novel series, I've tried my best to do so: The series follows Natty Bumppo, a frontiersman, who would oftentimes find himself caught up in conflicts or disagreements between the settlers and the natives of the Americas after making friends with the Mohican chief, Chingachgook, and his son Uncas. These stories of war and politics and even some love all tie together and take place over the span of Natty's life from the age of about twenty to his mid seventies.
Despite these books being written and published over 100 years ago, they earned a good amount of reputation and are still influencical stories today. While there were some parts of the series have been criticised by some readers for how they portray Native Americans and frontier history, these books remain an important part of American literature that shows the true ways of life people were living and handling things at the time.
Before we dive into the series itself, who exactly was the author James Fenimore Cooper? Well, he was born in New Jersey, but his family moved to Cooperstown, New York only about a year after his birth, which was a village that his father actually founded and named after them. Because of this, James spent many of his childhood years growing up there before he was sent to study at Yale College when he was 13. Unfortunately he was expelled about three years into his studies due to his michevious nature of pulling pranks, and instead switched his career focus by enlisting in the US Navy at about 19 years old after working as a simple seaman before. Upon resigning from the Navy in 1810, he met his to-be wife, and then began started to try his hand at writing and getting books published. James wrote two books before starting the Leatherstocking Tales, which were Precaution and The Spy.
Although James Fenimore Cooper wrote about 32 books within his lifetime, he was best known in his writings for the Leatherstocking Tales series, which he started writing after his popularity increased upon his release of his book The Spy, and is sometimes even referred to as the Father of the American Novel. He actually wrote the stories of the protagonist, Natty Bumppo, in a different order than the timeline of Natty's life, starting with The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie. There were also two books James wrote that related to characters within the original series as spin-offs.
Even thought it'd be a bit hard to sum up this whole novel series, I've tried my best to do so: The series follows Natty Bumppo, a frontiersman, who would oftentimes find himself caught up in conflicts or disagreements between the settlers and the natives of the Americas after making friends with the Mohican chief, Chingachgook, and his son Uncas. These stories of war and politics and even some love all tie together and take place over the span of Natty's life from the age of about twenty to his mid seventies.
Despite these books being written and published over 100 years ago, they earned a good amount of reputation and are still influencical stories today. While there were some parts of the series have been criticised by some readers for how they portray Native Americans and frontier history, these books remain an important part of American literature that shows the true ways of life people were living and handling things at the time.
