Our group read of The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper doesn't formally begin until Monday, June 1. But since that's coming up very soon, and is apt to be a busy day, I thought it wouldn't hurt to set up this discussion thread now, and share a few preliminaries!
Our group's thread on Cooper, which contains helpful background information that would be relevant to this read/discussion, is here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... . That post also has a link to the even more helpful and substantial Wikipedia article on Cooper, which is spoiler-free as far as this novel goes.
Published in 1826, The Last of the Mohicans is both the second novel to be written in the author's Leatherstocking Tales series, and the second installment in the internal chronology of the series. ("Leatherstocking" is one of several nicknames the protagonist, backwoods scout Natty Bumpo, will bear during his long career.) It's set in northern New York (near or on the upper Hudson River) in 1757, during the French and Indian War. It's Cooper's best-known novel today, though IMO the later The Deerslayer (1841) is probably his masterpiece.
I've already read this book twice, once as a kid and later as an adult. So I don't plan on rereading it again; but I'll definitely follow the discussion, and contribute to it where I can! The latest of my readings was of the 1951 reprint in Dodd Mead's Great Illustrated Classics series (I don't recall what edition I read the first time), which I can recommend. That one has a short (two and a half pages) Introduction by independent literary scholar Basil Davenport, which has no spoilers and is mostly a short biography of Cooper.
Our group's thread on Cooper, which contains helpful background information that would be relevant to this read/discussion, is here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... . That post also has a link to the even more helpful and substantial Wikipedia article on Cooper, which is spoiler-free as far as this novel goes.
Published in 1826, The Last of the Mohicans is both the second novel to be written in the author's Leatherstocking Tales series, and the second installment in the internal chronology of the series. ("Leatherstocking" is one of several nicknames the protagonist, backwoods scout Natty Bumpo, will bear during his long career.) It's set in northern New York (near or on the upper Hudson River) in 1757, during the French and Indian War. It's Cooper's best-known novel today, though IMO the later The Deerslayer (1841) is probably his masterpiece.
I've already read this book twice, once as a kid and later as an adult. So I don't plan on rereading it again; but I'll definitely follow the discussion, and contribute to it where I can! The latest of my readings was of the 1951 reprint in Dodd Mead's Great Illustrated Classics series (I don't recall what edition I read the first time), which I can recommend. That one has a short (two and a half pages) Introduction by independent literary scholar Basil Davenport, which has no spoilers and is mostly a short biography of Cooper.