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Article: Leatherstocking Tales
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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LEATHERSTOCKING TALES
LEATHERSTOCKING TALES.
James Fenimore Cooper's
Leatherstocking Tales,
featuring the adventures and exploits of independent frontiersman Natty Bumppo, were tremendously popular in the antebellum era and helped to define both American literary culture and the emerging nation's self-image. There were five tales in all:
The Pioneers
(1823),
The Last of the Mohicans
(1826),
The Prairie
(1827),
The Pathfinder
(1840), and
The Deerslayer
(1841). From the beginning, Cooper's works met with success, and he was hailed as America's first major author. Contemporary readers found in the
Leatherstocking Tales
both reassurance that American writers could produce significant ...