A restless white youth raised by Indians, Natty Bumppo is called Deerslayer for the daring that sets him apart from his peers. But he has yet to meet the test of human conflict. In a tale of violent action and superbly sustained suspense, the harsh realities of tribal warfare force him to kill his first foe, then face torture at the stake. Still yet another kind of initiation awaits him when he discovers not only the ruthlessness of "civilized" men, but also the special danger of a woman's will. His reckless spirit transformed into mature courage and moral certainty, the Deerslayer emerges to face life with nobility as pure and proud as the wilderness whose fierce beauty and freedom have claimed his heart.

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The wild rush of action in this classic frontier adventure story has made The Last of the Mohicans the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. Deep in the forests of upper New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas become embroiled in the bloody battles of the French and Indian War. The abduction of the beautiful Munro sisters by hostile savages, the treachery of the renegade brave Magua, the ambush of innocent settlers, and the thrilling events that lead to the final tragic confrontation between rival war parties create an unforgettable, spine-tingling picture of life on the frontier. And as the idyllic wilderness gives way to the forces of civilization, the novel presents a moving portrayal of a vanishing race and the end of its way of life in the great American forests.

The Pathfinder (1840), Cooper's most picturesque novel and the fourth of the five Leatherstocking Tales, is a naval story set on the Great Lakes of the 1750s. Fashioned from Cooper's own experience as a midshipman on Lake Ontario in 1808-09, the novel revives Natty Bumpo (who had died in The Prairie), and illuminates Cooper's interest in American history with his concern for social development.

The first of the five Leatherstocking Tales, The Pioneers is perhaps the most realistic and beautiful of the series. Drawing on his own experiences, Cooper brilliantly describes Frontier life, providing a fascinating backdrop to the real heart of the novel—the competing claims to land ownership of Native Americans and settlers. This edition follows the publication of The Last of the Mohicans in the World's Classics series and uses the standard text approved by the Modern Language Association.

In the spring of 1826, soon after the publication of The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper immersed himself in The Prairie. In taking Natty Bumppo from his beloved forests of New York state to the Great American Plains, Cooper was in part fulfilling his own prophecy at the end of The Pioneers. Though he was certainly recalling the periodic westward removals of Daniel Boone, one of the prototypes of Natty Bumppo, he was also responding to the ever-increasing public interest in Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase. No characterization more clearly exhibits the firmness of Cooper’s vision than that of Natty Bumppo. As his colossal entrance implies, Cooper has reconceived him, and through him, the world in which he moves. Though descended from the garrulous hunter of The Pioneers and reduced to the lowly occupation of a trapper, his moral stature has undergone an apotheosis. Though he is again in The Prairie the loyal guide he was in The Last of the Mohicans, his words here take on even more striking moral force. He is both the spokesman for and the representation of, the most basic rhythm of existence, the natural cycle of life which must end in death. The metaphor of the prairie as the sea, shaped by Cooper’s meditation on the relationships between Nature, God, and Man, seems to have had a fertile hold on his imagination. The sea is, as he knew by personal experience, a place of isolation and emptiness on whose surface man lives a precarious life. Imagistically Cooper’s plot sets his little bands―the groups of outcasts led by Natty, Ishmael’s family, the Sioux, and the Pawnees―to converge and tack away from each other. There is also much in the bursts of action―escapes, captures, shifting alliances, steering by moonlight―that evokes sea life. This same metaphor also points us to a central theme of The Prairie. Beyond the fast-paced action, the novel becomes a meditation on the ways of establishing justice between men.