Books : The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

In association with Amazon.com
 View Shopping Cart or Checkout 

Author name: James Fenimore Cooper

: The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
View Bigger Picture
Discount Price: $7.95
Price fluctuation possible.

Used Price: $2.57
Third Party New Price: $5.89


How soon does it ship: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, very first served.



Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9781593082116
ISBN number: 1593082118
Label: Barnes & Noble Classics
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 608
Printing Date: July 01, 2005
Publishing house: Barnes & Noble Classics
Sale Popularity Level: 298006
Studio: Barnes & Noble Classics



Other books you might be interested in perusing:

Editor's Notes and Comments:

Product Description:
The Deerslayer, by James Fenimore Cooper, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
 
“Live by your own council. Be brave in the face of the unknown. Be always fair.”
-Natty Bumppo, The Deerslayer

One of the greatest heroes in American literature, Natty Bumppo is the rugged frontiersman of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels that includes The Last of the Mohicans and The Deerslayer. Although the final volume to be written, The Deerslayer is the very first in the chronology of Natty Bumppo’s life, depicting the character as a young man testing himself in the wilderness, and against enemies, for the very first time.

Set in the 1740’s just as the French and Indian wars have begun, the novel opens as Natty Bumppo—known as Deerslayer—and his friend Hurry Harry travel to Tom Hutter’s house in upstate New York. Hurry plans to marry Tom’s beautiful daughter Judith, while Deerslayer has come to help his close friend Chingachgook save his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, from the Huron Indians. When war breaks out, and Hurry and Tom are captured by Indians, Deerslayer must go on his very first warpath to rescue them.

One of the earliest novels to be considered truly “American,' The Deerslayer is a masterpiece of suspense, adventure, and romance.
 
Bruce L. R. Smith is a fellow at the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author or editor of sixteen scholarly books, and he continues to lecture widely in the United States and abroad.




Customer Reviews
User popularity level: out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - A well written and beatifully descriptive story
This was the very first book that I have read of James Fennimore Cooper and it was a much different, but this 19th century book was an equally rewarding experience to reading any of the great novels of the 20th century. Cooper's long sentences and descriptions paint rich pictures that we are rarely treated to in newer books.

The Deerslayer is the very first book chronologically in the Leatherstocking Tales although it was the last one written. It tells the story of Natty Bumpo (Deerslayer) who meets with his Indian friend Chigachgook to rescue his friend the rival Iroquois tribe. Deerslayer quickly becomes involved with a trapper, his friend and his friends two daughters who live in a house on a lake in the Mohawk Stream in New York. The story takes places at the start of the French-Indian War (7-Years War) and the story tells the battle of wits and arms that take place between this group and the Iroquois that have surrounded the lake. While the story has richly described action sequences it also involves intense dialogue between the groups.

All of the characters are extremely well developed. They embody various stereotypes of the early American frontier. Deerslayer can be a little idealistic at times but is made to embody the ideal of the noble American frontiersman who respects the Native Americans and their way of life in the spirit that we wish all Americans had.

The book can be a struggle to get into with its style of long sentences and descriptions, but it is well worth the effort. It is a wonderfully told story and leaves me looking forward to the rest of the Cooper's works.



Rated by buyers 3 out of 5 stars - Important foundation novel in the evolution of American literature
Set in upstate New York in the 1740s, James Fenimore Cooper's classic novel The Deerslayer is the very first of five books concerning Natty Bumppo, the titular character. Cooper wrote the novels out of sequence, but when assembled they recount various stages of Natty's life from this, his very first warpath at the age of nineteen, all the way to his death as an octogenarian out on the prairies fleeing the onslaught of the pioneers. In The Deerslayer, Natty and his closest friend and ally, a Delaware named Chingachgook, have embarked on a journey to free Chingachgook's love Hist from the clutches of the Mingos. Interestingly, essentially all of the characters and tribes in the book bear multiple names: Natty himself is also called the Deerslayer, gains the name Hawkeye during the story, and has had several other monikers in his youth. This would be confusing except the cast is fairly small and the book is on the long side, meaning there is plenty of time to get accustomed to Cooper's writing and naming conventions.

The principal action of the tale revolves around a small scale week-long conflict that erupts as Natty, along with Chingachgook, white hunter "Hurry Harry," and the Hutters, a settler family, come into conflict with the tribe that has kidnapped Hist. The setting is powerfully evocative, and Cooper conjures an air of a mythic America that probably never exactly existed in the form depicted but that is nonetheless alluring. Pristine lakes, endless forests, and ancient mountains fill out the background while Cooper painstakingly elaborates on the Hutter family's castle built in the lake and the ark in which they travel. The setting itself was the strongest element of the book.

More challenging is the long-winded manner in which the characters discourse on any imaginable subject, at what feels the greatest of possible lengths. For a nineteen-year-old woodsman with little formal education, Natty is certainly quite voluble with his opinions and does not hesitate to reveal them whether solicited or not. Cooper seems more interested in dialogue than action. There are some tense moments that underscore the desperate situation the characters are in, but the amount of dialogue is often burdensome and diminishes the impact when the story actually moves forward. The characters do raise some intriguing topics, such as Natty's obsession with gifts and identity and many of the discussions of relative morality concerning subjects such as scalping or relationships, but at times reading the dialogue is a pure chore. There are also some marked tonal shifts where a character speaks with a voice and construction not entirely consistent with what was presented before.

The edition I read is the Barnes and Noble Classics release, which includes an interesting introduction to both the novel and generally to Cooper, as well as the infamous Mark Twain essay in which he dissects and discards Cooper's works. My take nets somewhere in the middle of Cooper's supporters and detractors. I found the Deerslayer to be a solid but long-winded adventure/romance, but it is certainly worth reading as an important step in the development of American literature.



Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - "We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness."
In THE DEERSLAYER, Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo, mythic hero of the LEATHERSTOCKING TALES, only 18 or 20 years old, steps self-confidently into world literature. He will reappear in one sequel and three prequels by James Fenimore Cooper. Mr Bumppo begins the novel styled "Deerslayer," appropriate to a peaceful young man who lives like an Indian brave among the Christianized Delawares, and ends as "Hawkeye" after his very first man-kill, when his reputation as a crack shot is solidified.

Europe is locked in its War of The Austrian Succession. That conflict has just spread to North America as "King George's War" (1744 - 1748). The fresh hostilities have unleashed Indian allies of both French and English. Natty's slightly older Delaware/Mohican friend Chingachgook, "the Great Serpent," is on the war-path pursuing the Hurons or Iroquois (Cooper is never clear about which, letting Natty call both tribes indiscriminately Mingos, to distinguish them from his beloved Delaware) who have whisked away his fiancee, Hist-oh-Hist, or Hist for short. The two inseparable friends had agreed before novel's beginning to meet up at Lake Otsego in Central New York to effect Hist's liberation.

Over seven days a little Trojan War is played out on lake and ashore, with Natty, a young Achilles, mythical North American sans pareil, in his very first starring role. Experienced sailour Fenimore Cooper will later have his lake lore called savagely into question by another fresh water expert: Mississippi River pilot Mark Twain. Is Cooper so likely to have mistaken the size of the "ark" of old Floating Tom Hutter as Twain pretends? Would that small craft have been so slowly winched out of the river at the foot of Lake Otsego that a Mingo war party led by great chief Rivenoak would all drop like idiots into the water behind it when they leap down from a tree directly above it?

DEERSLAYER is a story of white-red relations, of the love of two Indians -- Chingachgook and Wist, of sailing and trapping and of that very first time when two young warriors of different races kill their very first human prey out legally on the international war-path. The young giant Hurry Harry loves Floating Tom's beautiful daughter Judith. She loves Deerslayer. Tom's simple-minded daughter Hetty loves Hurry Harry. The young Huron brave Catamount loves Hist. Love is in the air of the ferocious forest primeval. Natty Bumppo tells the disappointed Judith that he is happy to be her friend, but if he had a mother and father he would not leave them for her or any other woman.

British redcoats stationed not far away come to the relief of Tom's besieged family, happily slaughtering Huron women and children when given the chance. Hatred there is a-plenty between the races. When the slaughter is done and the players have departed, fifteen years pass. The lake returns to a solitude. Three inseparables, Natty and widowed Chingachgook along with Chingachgook's stripling son Uncas, then return to Lake Otsego, long deserted, to reminisce briefly. Ruins of old canoes, the ark and scattered bones of the buried remind of once fierce battles. One of Judith's old ribbons makes Deerslayer's heart beat faster. A new name has stuck to him, Hawkeye, earned by endless prowess with his already legendary great long rifle "Killdeer," Judith's present to him. Judith, we fear, makes an unhappy, immoral ending as the unwed lover of an unworthy nobleman.

Yet Otsego, also called Glimmerglass, was the very first mountain lake Natty ever beheld and the most beautiful. It was a major source of the mighty Susquehannah River which would end in Chesapeake Bay. Deerslayer/Hawkeye would later return and dwell beside it for decades till driven out onto the western prairies by encroaching, destructive white civilization.

THE DEERSLAYERtale ends with a sober moralizing sentence worthy of Calvin tempered by Augustine:

"We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true; though happily for human nature, gleamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating, if not excusing its crimes. "(Ch. 32)

It is all there in THE DEERSLAYER: good and evil embedded in heart after human heart. Thank God for those occasional gleamings of human goodness, infrequent as they may be, especially among warriors and more pacific males! -OOO-


Find other books like this one:

 


Vulgaris Psoriasis / Stop Panic Attacks / Wildfell Hall / Beautiful Joe / Stories /
Sherlock Holmes Brother Personalized Birthday Gifts Employee Of The Month Gifts Autism Research Cookie Gift Basket Arabic Lessons Alice In Wonderland Game Day Screensaver Valentine Cat Lover Gift Book Coloring Jungle Page Sherlock Holmes Realty

Home - Nancy Drew - Sherlock Holmes - Jane Austen - Enid Blyton