Wyandotte: Or the Hunted Knoll (Writings of James Fenimore Cooper): A Tale (The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper) - Softcover

Cooper, James Fenimore

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0873954696 ISBN 13: 9780873954693

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1981

Synopsis

"One of the misfortunes of a nation, is to hear little besides its own praises," wrote James Fenimore Cooper in his Preface to Wyandotté in 1843. The novel arrived at a time when a patriotic mythology about the American Revolution was developing, and Cooper's somber tale of the sufferings of an isolated family in upstate New York during the Revolution was not congruent with the celebratory stories then being told. One reviewer indeed objected to Cooper's "cynicism which hunts after cracks and crevices and unshapely stones in the altar of our political devotion."

In its critical trenchancy, somber tone, and subdued action, Wyandotté is representative of the strongest novels of Cooper's last decade. The elements of romance that are prominent in his fiction of the 1820s here give way to a new emphasis upon characterization and a new interest in familial life. As Edgar Allen Poe observed, in Maud Meredith Cooper creates his most spirited heroine, and in Saucy Nick, his most credible Indian.

"Nothing is truly patriotic," Cooper warns us in his Preface, "that is not strictly true and just." In his last tale of the Revolution, he leaves national self-congratulation to the orators and newspaper editors and hews to his own demanding conception of devotion to his country.

About this title

About the Author:

James Fenimore Cooper (1789 - 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. His historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a unique form of American literature. He lived most of his life in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father William on property that he owned. Cooper was a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church and, in his later years, contributed generously to it. He attended Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the Linonian Society, but was expelled for misbehavior. Before embarking on his career as a writer, he served in the U.S. Navy as a Midshipman, which greatly influenced many of his novels and other writings. The novel that launched his career was The Spy, a tale about counterespionage set during the Revolutionary War and published in 1821. He also wrote numerous sea stories and his best-known works are five historical novels of the frontier period known as the Leatherstocking Tales. Among naval historians, Cooper's works on the early U.S. Navy have been well received, but they were sometimes criticized by his contemporaries. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece.

About this edition

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0873954696
• ISBN 13: 9780873954693
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 482
• Editor: Philbrick Thomas