Oxford World's Classics: The Deerslayer

The Deerslayer (1841) is the last-written of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, but the first in the development of the hero, Natty Bumppo. Here, Cooper returns Leatherstocking to his youth and to a pristine wilderness that D. H. Lawrence said was perhaps 'lovelier than any place created in language'. This novel, and the contemporaneous The Pathfinder, mark Cooper's return to historical romance after more than a decade given largely to social and political commentary. Written during the period...