The Last of the Mohicans. Limited Editions Club, 1932

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851).
The Last of the Mohicans.
New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1932.
Call Number: (SPL) PS 1408 .A1 1932b
Gift of Loryn Romadka, from the collection of Austin F. Lutter.
Special Collections, Golda Meir Library

Limited Editions Club founder George Macy included Cooper's story in the Club's offerings due to its uniquely American sense of adventure:

His novels are all jamful of action; his characters are all stilted, their conversation stiff and formal and unnatural; but even at this late date they are read avidly; and the best known of them, The Last of the Mohicans, belongs in the library of every cultivated person.

Macy therefore decided to bring out a uniquely American edition of The Last of the Mohicans in July of 1932, in honor of Independence Day. "An ardently patriotic book, an All-American ... it is an American book, by an American author, with an American type on an American paper and illustrations by an American." The text was set in Goudy Modern, a crisp black typeface created by famous and prolific designer Frank Goudy. The illustrations were created by Edward A. Wilson: twelve pictures with black pen line and sixteen full page pictures printed in eight watercolor inks from rubber plates. The book was planned by Will Ransom and printed by the Leo Hart Company of Rochester, New York. The 400 page large octavo volume was bound in half-buckskin and handmade marbled paper, "highly suggestive of Indian motifs."