James Fenimore Cooper
Sail out for adventure on the high seas with famed author James Fenimore Cooper. The Two Admirals is a gripping tale of nautical warfare set during the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. Parallel with the plotline of naval conflict is a puzzle of inheritance, as Sir Wycherly Wychecombe struggles to identify the true heir of his family's wealth and legacy.
Wrapped in what appears at first to be a fairly straightforward maritime action-adventure novel, James Fenimore Cooper's Jack Tier offers fascinating layers of complexity. Set against the backdrop of the U.S.-Mexico War, this in-depth look at life at sea includes hidden identities, racial strife, ageism, and material greed.
The sequel to his earlier novel, Homeward Bound, James Fenimore Cooper's Home as Found was inspired by events in the author's own life. After living abroad for a number of years, Cooper and his family returned to the U.S., only to be appalled by what he regarded as a marked devolution in the national character. An in-depth exploration of this decline is the central focus of Home as Found.
7) The Lake Gun
In this parable-like short story from American author James Fenimore Cooper, a sage Native American relates the tragic tale of a young upstart named See-wise who bucks tribal tradition and tries to convince his fellow fisherman to flout seasonal restrictions on fishing. For this transgression, he is doomed to an eternal punishment.
The setting is the American Revolutionary War, and the action begins as two ships enter a bay in England to pick up a pilot. Who is the mysterious figure who they will be plucking from the rocky cliffs, and what role will he play in the battles ahead? Take off with James Fenimore Cooper's The Pilot if gripping nautical adventure is your desired destination.
10) The Monikins
When several of his novels were met with mixed critical and popular reactions, American author James Fenimore Cooper took a break from the romantic epics that had long been his stock-in-trade and tried his hand at Swiftian satire. The fantastical creatures who populate thinly veiled versions of England and America in the novel have one thing in common with humans: an abiding preoccupation with money.
Perhaps more than any other nineteenth-century American author, James Fenimore Cooper sought to represent the culture and struggles of Native Americans. Although his depictions of indigenous tribes still bear traces of the endemic racism that was part of the larger American culture at the time, they did represent a literary breakthrough in the era. In the novel The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish, Cooper shifts the focus to the earliest encounters
...In spite of the fact that he is the author of many quintessentially American novels, including The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper spent a significant portion of his life in France, where he moved his family in the hopes of boosting his writing income. This volume of essays focuses on Cooper's impressions of and experiences in Europe.
14) Precaution
Though he would later rise to prominence as one of the most important American writers of his generation, James Fenimore Cooper's first literary effort was inspired by a wager with his wife, to whom he had offhandedly remarked that he could probably write a more exciting book than the English domestic novels that were the bestsellers of the day. Strongly influenced by Jane Austen, Precaution was initially published under a female pseudonym.
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