The Last of buying the Mohicans ~ James Fenimore Cooper - 1979, Easton Press, Illustrated, Leather, Moire Endpapers, Integral Bookmark, Near New

The Last of the Mohicans

By James Fenimore Cooper

Illustrations by Edward A. Wilson

The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Collector's Edition
Bound in Genuine Leather

1979, The Easton Press
Norwalk, Connecticut

Sewn binding. Reddish Brown leather over boards with gilt decoration on front and back and design and lettering on spine. Integral ribbon marker sewn in. Four spine hubs. All edges of leaves gilt. Moiré endpapers. 10.25", 377 pages, publisher's preface, color frontispiece, illustrations, an unattached and unmarked Easton Press bookplate

Near New to New.

From the Preface by Edward Everett Hale

"The Last of the Mohicans" is the central one of the five Leatherstocking stories, as that series now stands. "Deerslayer" and "Pathfinder" present Natty Bumppo to the Man of the Forest in his earlier days, "The Pioneers" and "The Prairie" toward the end of his life. "The Last of the Mohicans" presents him in the prime of life, a well-recognized scout in the midst of the Seven Years War. It is a book which did most to present this typical American character to the world, the book which made the definite impression which has remained in the mind. "The Pioneers" and "The Prairie", one written before and one after "The Last of the Mohicans", present the old man who has seen and known life, "Deerslayer" and "Pathfinder", written several years after the other, present the young man gaining experience. But in "The Last of the Mohicans" Leatherstocking is in his prime, and as such made a striking and definite effect upon the world, which has endured for more than a hundred years.

....

In Cooper's Leatherstockings we have the earlier impression of the American Scene, not only in the descriptions themselves, but in the old backwoodsman who for so long a time made his home therein. "He loved the woods," Cooper wrote of Natty Bumppo in a later book, "for their freshness, their sublime solitude, their vastness, and the impress that they everywhere bore of the divine hand of their creator. He seldom moved through them without pausing to dwell on some particular beauty that gave him pleasure, though seldom attempting to investigate the cause; buying and never a day did pass without his communing in spirit, and this, too, without the aid of forms or language, with the infinite source of all he say, felt, and beheld."

BEP