Other editions of book James Fenimore Cooper - The Prairie

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The Prairie: A Tale (1827) is a novel by James Fenimore Cooper, the 3rd novel written by him featuring Natty Bumppo. His fictitious frontier hero Bumppo is never called by his name, but is instead referred to as "the trapper" or "the old man." Chronologically The Prairie is the 5th & final installment of the Leatherstocking Tales, tho it was published before The Pathfinder (1841) & The Deerslayer (1842). It depicts Natty in the final year of his life still proving helpful to people in distress on the American frontier. The book frequently references characters & events from the two books previously published in the Leatherstocking Tales as well as the two which Cooper wouldn’t write for more than ten years. Continuity with The Last of the Mohicans is indicated by the appearance of the grandson of Duncan & Alice Heyward & the noble Pawnee chief Hard Heart, whose name is English for the French nickname for the Delaware, le Coeur-dur.

Set on the Great Plains during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific coast, The Prairie is the third of James Fenimore Cooper’s novels to feature Natty Bumppo, the famous Hawkeye. Now in his eighties, Bumppo has left New York for the untouched expanses of the frontier. There he encounters the wagon train of Ishmael Bush and his family. Bush is very soon in trouble with the Teton Sioux (Lakota), and Bumppo endeavours to help.As the last of the author’s Leatherstocking Tales, the novel finds the hero of The Last of the Mohicans at the end of life, seeking to evade civilization as it creeps toward his beloved, and vast, wilderness. Nostalgic in tone, The Prairie is an examination of the great migration that took place following the Louisiana Purchase and the opening of the American west.HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

The Prairie" was the third in order of Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Its first appearance was in the year 1827. The idea of the story had suggested itself to him, we are told, before he had finished its immediate forerunner, "The Last of the Mohicans." He chose entirely new scenes for it, "resolved to cross the Mississippi and wander over the desolate wastes of the remote Western prairies." He had been taking every chance that came of making a personal acquaintance with the Indian chiefs of the western tribes who were to be encountered about this period on their way in the frequent Indian embassies to Washington. "He saw much to command his admiration," says Mrs. Cooper, "in these wild braves... It was a matter of course that in drawing Indian character he should dwell on the better traits of the picture, rather than on the coarser and more revolting though more common points. Like West, he could see the Apollo in the young Mohawk."

How is this book unique?Font adjustments & biography includedUnabridged (100% Original content)IllustratedAbout The Prairie by James Fenimore CooperThe Prairie is a novel by James Fenimore Cooper, the third novel written by him featuring Natty Bumppo. His fictitious frontier hero Bumppo is never called by his name, but is instead referred to as "the trapper" or "the old man." Chronologically The Prairie is the fifth and final installment of the Leatherstocking Tales. It depicts Natty in the final year of his life still proving helpful to people in distress on the American frontier. Plot: The story opens with Ishmael, his family, Ellen and Abiram slowly making their way across the virgin prairies of the Midwest looking for a homestead, just two years after the Louisiana Purchase, and during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They meet the trapper (Natty Bumppo), who has left his home in New York state to find a place where he cannot hear the sound of people cutting down the forests. In the years between his other adventures and this novel, he tells us only that he has walked all the way to the Pacific Ocean and seen all the land between the coasts[citation needed] (a heroic feat, considering Lewis and Clark hadn’t yet completed the same trek). That night, a band of Teton warriors steal all of Ishmael’s animals, stranding the immigrants. The doctor returns the next morning along with his donkey. The trapper helps the family relocate their wagons, including one with mysterious contents, to a nearby butte where they will be safer when the Tetons return. Middleton joins the group when he stumbles upon the trapper and Paul. Before they return to the butte, Ishmael and his family go looking for his eldest son, Asa, whom they find murdered. The trapper, Paul, and Middleton return to camp, find Inez whom Abiram and Ishmael had been keeping captive, and flee with her and Ellen. Ishmael chases them until the Tetons capture the Trapper and his crew. They escape the Tetons, and then Ishmael forms an alliance with the Indians. The Indians attempt to recapture the trapper by surrounding them with a prairie fire, but the trapper lights a backfire and saves everyone. They meet up with Hard-heart, a Pawnee Indian who survived the fire wrapped in a buffalo skin, and attempt to escape to his village. The Tetons capture them. Ishmael demands the trapper, Inez, and Ellen for helping the Tetons but is denied and turned away. Mahtoree intends to take Inez and Ellen for his new wives. Le Balafre attempts to spare Hard-heart’s life by making Hard-heart his son. Hard-heart refuses, kills Weucha, and flees the village. When Hard-heart’s Pawnee warriors attack the Teton village, the trapper and his friends escape, only to be captured by Ishmael. The trapper is accused of Asa’s death until Abiram’s guilt is discovered. Abiram is executed, and Ishmael’s family returns east without Inez, Ellen, or the doctor. Middleton, Inez, Paul and Ellen travel back to Louisiana and Kentucky, respectively, while the trapper joins a Pawnee village located on a tributary of the Missouri River. Middleton and Paul return just in time to witness the trapper's noble death and bury him.

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The action of James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie (1827) unfolds against the backdrop of the grasslands beyond the Mississippi, just after the Louisiana Purchase, in the early days of western expansion. It features Cooper's most celebrated literary creation, Natty Bumppo, now aged and reduced to making a living by trapping. As the frontiersman's epic journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific nears its end in a vast and still uninhabited region that Cooper consistently imagines as an ocean of the interior, nothing less than the future identity of America is at stake, Domhnall Mitchell suggests in his Introduction.The John Harvard Library edition reproduces the authoritative text of the novel from The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper, published by the State University of New York Press.Since 1959 The John Harvard Library has been instrumental in publishing essential American writings in authoritative editions.

The Prairie: A Tale (1827) is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper, the third novel written by him featuring Natty Bumppo, his fictitious frontier hero, who is simply known as "the trapper" in it. Chronologically The Prairie is the fifth and final installment of the Leatherstocking Tales. It depicts Natty in the final year of his life still proving helpful to people in distress on the American frontier. Continuity with The Last of the Mohicans is indicated by the appearance of the grandson of Duncan and Alice Heyward of The Last of the Mohicans and the noble Pawnee chief Hard Heart, whose name is English for the French nickname for the Delaware, le Coeur-dur. Natty is drawn to Hard Heart as a noble warrior in the likeness of his dear friend Uncas, "the last of the Mohicans."