The Prairie

by James Fenimore Cooper

Overview

First published in 1827, The Prairie is set in the American frontier. It is part of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and is the third book to feature Natty Bumppo, a trapper and frontiersman. Other characters from Cooper's famous The Last of the Mohicans, including chief Hard Heart, also appear in this book.

The story follows Natty on his travels to the prairie of Nebraska, where he meets up with a family of squatters who are hiding a secret. One of their own, Abiram White, has kidnapped a young woman from her family and husband in Louisiana. The husband, an artillery captain, and his men are hunting the squatters through the frontier, and Natty takes it upon himself to help the young man find his stolen bride.

Full of adventure and tense battles, The Prairie is a classic tale of the American West suitable for both teenage and adult readers.

Popular American novelist JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-11851) is best remembered for his 1826 epic The Last of the Mohicans, considered his masterpiece.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781602068346
Publisher:	Cosimo Classics
Publication date:	10/15/2007
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.03(d)

About the Author

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) grew up at Otsego Hall, his father’s manorial estate near Lake Otsego in upstate New York. Educated at Yale, he spent five years at sea, as a foremast hand and then as a midshipman in the navy. At thirty he was suddenly plunged into a literary career when his wife challenged his claim that he could write a better book that the English novel he was reading to her. The result was Precaution (1820), a novel of manners. His second book, The Spy (1821), was an immediate success, and with The Pioneers (1823) he began his series of Leatherstocking Tales. By 1826 when The Last of the Mohicans appeared, his standing as a major novelist was clearly established. From 1826 to 1833 Cooper and his family lived and traveled in France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. Two of his most successful works, The Prairie and The Red Rover, were published in 1827. He returned to Otsego Hall in 1834, and after a series of relatively unsuccessful books of essays, travel sketches, and history, he returned to fiction – and to Leatherstocking – with The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841). In his last decade he faced declining popularity brought on in part by his waspish attacks on critics and political opponents. Just before his death in 1851 an edition of his works led to a reappraisal of his fiction and somewhat restored his reputation as the first of American writers.

Date of Birth:

September 15, 1789

Date of Death:

September 14, 1851

Place of Birth:

Burlington, New Jersey

Place of Death:

Cooperstown, New York

Education:

Yale University (expelled in 1805)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Illustrations

Historical Introduction

Preface [1827]

Introduction [1832]

Interpolations in 1832 Introduction [1849]

The Prairie

Textual Commentary

Note on the Manuscripts

Textual Notes

Emendations

Rejected Readings

Word-Division

Editorial Reviews

We still read Cooper today because he was the first of our authors to seize upon the dramatic possibilities of that unfallen western world that stands at the beginning of our national life.”

J. W. Ward