James Fenimore Cooper: The Complete Works
Author: James Fenimore Cooper
Date Of Publication: Mar 2010
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-1366-2
Isbn: 1-4438-1366-4
James Fenimore Cooper is chiefly known to posterity as the author of The Last of the Mohicans, focussing on the friendship between a Native American chief and a white hunter. Cooper himself acknowledged that it was his “Leatherstocking Tales” which were the most likely to endure of his work; yet this estimate understates Cooper’s significance as the most prolific and internationally-read American author of the first half of the nineteenth century. Fenimore Cooper developed a distinctive style well adapted to handling frontier, military and nautical romances, which won him great popularity and gave him entry to the leading figures in post-Napoleonic Europe. In consequence he also became one of the most sophisticated political and environmentalist thinkers of his time. His explicitly political writings and politically-involved novels won him both considerable influence and formidable social rejection. His environmental worries, perceptible in many of his works, anticipate today’s concerns. Cooper was also a significant historian, and broke new literary ground in writing a biography of an ordinary sailor when such works were always concerned with the “great and the good”. The breadth and significance of his output remains widely under-recognised, and too many of his works hard to find.

This edition of the Complete Works of Fenimore Cooper not only includes the well-known novels, but obscure early fictional works and the significant non-fictional works, including the naval histories and biographies, the pioneering biography Ned Myers, travel writing, and the political pamphlets which were of great importance in Cooper’s time. The contents of the volumes are as follows:

Volume 1 (333 pp.): Precaution; Introduction to the Works by Dr. Bob Lawson-Peebles

Volume 2 (335 pp.): The Spy

Volume 3 (94 pp.): Tales for Fifteen

Volume 4 (417 pp.): The Deerslayer (Leatherstocking Tales vol. 1)

Volume 5 (316 pp.): The Last of the Mohicans (Leatherstocking Tales vol. 2)

Volume 6 (378 pp.): The Pathfinder (Leatherstocking Tales vol. 3)

Volume 7 (367 pp.): The Pioneers (Leatherstocking Tales vol. 4)

Volume 8 (348 pp.): The Prairie (Leatherstocking Tales vol. 5)

Volume 9 (342 pp.): The Pilot

Volume 10 (324 pp.): Lionel Lincoln

Volume 11 (351 pp.): The Red Rover

Volume 12 (312 pp.): The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish

Volume 13 (336 pp.): The Water-Witch

Volume 14 (325 pp.): The Bravo

Volume 15 (310 pp.): The Heidenmauer

Volume 16 (334 pp.): The Headsman

Volume 17 (309 pp.): The Monikins

Volume 18 (370 pp.): Homeward Bound

Volume 19 (343 pp.): Home as Found

Volume 20 (374 pp.): Mercedes of Castile

Volume 21 (375 pp.): The Two Admirals

Volume 22 (349 pp.): The Wing-and-Wing

Volume 23 (346 pp.): Wyandotté

Volume 24 (117 pp.): Autobiography Of a Pocket-Handkerchief

Volume 25 (387 pp.): Afloat and Ashore

Volume 26 (329 pp.): Miles Wallingford

Volume 27 (356 pp.): Satanstoe (Littlepage Manuscripts vol. 1)

Volume 28 (340 pp.): The Chainbearer (Littlepage Manuscripts vol. 2)

Volume 29 (374 pp.): The Redskins (Littlepage Manuscripts vol. 3)

Volume 30 (340 pp.): The Crater

Volume 31 (350 pp.): Jack Tier

Volume 32 (343 pp.): The Oak Openings

Volume 33 (331 pp.): The Sea Lions

Volume 34 (347 pp.): The Ways of the Hour

Volume 35 (94 pp.): Point de Bateaux à Vapeur, The Lake Gun, Upside Down, reviews of Sedgwick's "A New-England Tale" and Irving's "Bracebridge Hall"

Volume 36 (455 pp.): Notions of the Americans

Volume 37 (138 pp.): The American Democrat

Volume 38 (215 pp.): Review of "An Examination of the New Tariff", Slavery in the United States, Letter to General Lafayette, A Letter to His Countrymen, writings on the Three Mile Point controversy, American and European Scenery Compared, New York

Volume 39 (124 pp.): Gleanings in Europe: Switzerland

Volume 40 (220 pp.): Gleanings in Europe: The Rhine

Volume 41 (238 pp.): Gleanings in Europe: France

Volume 42 (248 pp.): Gleanings in Europe: England

Volume 43 (239 pp.): Gleanings in Europe: Italy

Volume 44 (551 pp.): History of the Navy of the United States

Volume 45 (274 pp.): Naval Biographies

Volume 46 (178 pp.): Ned Myers

Volume 47 (294 pp.): Reviews of Clark's "Naval History of the United States", Scoresby's "Account of the Arctic Regions" and Parry's "Journal of a Voyage of Discovery", Comparative Resources of the American Navy, Hints on Manning the Navy, The Edinburgh Review on James's Naval Occurrances and Cooper's Naval History, The Cruise of the Somers, Old Ironsides, The Battle of Plattsburg Bay

Volume 48 (82 pp.): The Eclipse, Preface to Elinor Wyllys, diary extracts, The Chronicles of Cooperstown

The Works have all been newly typeset for this edition. Most of the texts (Ned Myers and the novels except Tales for Fifteen and Autobiography Of a Pocket-Handkerchief) have been taken from the "Iroquois Edition" (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, not dated, 33 vols.). The remainder are chiefly from print editions now in the public domain, except for "A Letter to my Countrymen," "The Chronicles of Cooperstown," "Pas de Bateaux à Vapeur―Une Vision," "Review of the Somers Mutiny Courtmartial," "Upside Down; or the World in Petticoats," "The Lake Gun," "New York" and "Old Ironsides," for which the source texts are the electronic versions kindly provided by the James Fenimore Cooper Society.

Dr. Bob Lawson-Peebles, Senior Lecturer at Exeter University and a leading authority on American literature and Fenimore Cooper in particular, has written a new critical introduction to the Works.

Dr. Bob Lawson-Peebles is Senior Lecturer in English at Exeter University and a graduate of Sussex (BA, MA) and Oxford (DPhil) Universities. He has lectured in the UK and the US, and has research interests in transatlantic relations, earlier American literature, the cultural history of environmentalism, and modern American cultural history. He has published, among much else, essays on Fenimore Cooper and a monograph on American Literature Before 1880.

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