The Last of the Mohicans. Colburn and Bentley, 1831

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851).
The Last of the Mohicans; A Narrative of 1757. Revised, cor., and illus. with a new introduction, etc. by the author.
London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1831.
Call Number: (RARE) PS 1408 .A1 1831
From the library of Clifton Waller Barrett.
Special Collections, Golda Meir Library

It was after Cooper settled with John Miller and returned to his original English publisher that he got the idea for The Leatherstocking Tales. He wrote to publisher Colburn in October of 1826, "The Pioneers is out of print, I believe, and The Mohicans must be nearly so. These two books with The Prairie will form a complete series of tales, descriptive of American life, of themselves. The Hero of one is the hero of all, in very different situations. Thus the scout of the Mohicans, is the hunter of the Pioneers and the Trapper of the Prairie. They might be published uniformly, under some taking GENERAL title, and I think would sell. I should be glad to revise them all, with this intention, for my own credit, for I think the subjects of which they treat, finished. I intend the next book to be nautical..." The astronomical success of the first trilogy prompted him to continue the series in the 1840s, during a low point in his career, with The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder.