The Pathfinder: the Inland Sea

Publisher Marketing: This collector-quality edition includes the complete text of James Fenimore Cooper's classic tale of romance and adventure along the colonial Canadian frontier in a freshly edited and newly typeset edition. With a large 7.44"x9.69" page size, this Summit Classic edition is printed on hefty bright white paper with a fully laminated cover featuring an original full color design. Page headers and proper placement of footnotes exemplify the attention to detail given this volume. "The Pathfinder" was published in 1840, the fourth published of Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales" saga. Chronologically, it is set after "The Last of the Mohicans" and before "The Pioneers" and thus third in the series. Sent on a secret mission to a British fortress hidden among the Thousand Islands of Canadian Lake Ontario, Cooper's indomitable frontier hero, Natty Bumppo, sometimes called Hawkeye or Deerslayer, is known in this tale as the Pathfinder, guiding his companions on the perilous journey to Lake Ontario, "inland sea" of the novel's subtitle. Against the background of Cooper's vivid descriptions of the frontier and the wilderness, the Pathfinder and his loyal friend Chingachgook protect the lovely Mabel Dunham, lead the party through a series of forest skirmishes, flights and escapes, and ferret out a traitor. Along the way the Pathfinder and his party ride out a storm on the lake, battle Iroquois on the Oswego River, and navigate a birch-bark canoe over a waterfall. As in many of Cooper's historical novels, a subplot of the book is a romance, this time involving the Pathfinder, Mabel and a handsome young lake captain, Jasper Western. With the publication of "The Spy" in 1821, James Fenimore Cooper became an international figure and the first authentic American novelist, free of the forms and conventions of the British fiction of the day. With "The Leatherstocking Tales" he became the first great interpreter of the American experience, chronicling the adventures of the indomitable Natty Bumppo, known variously as "Hawkeye," "Deerslayer," "Pathfinder," "Leatherstocking" and other names, from the colonial Indian wars through the early expansion into the vast western plains. Published between 1823 and 1841, beginning with "The Pioneers" and ending with "The Deerslayer," the tales are set against historical events ranging from 1740 to 1804, with Cooper taking some literary license with the actual chronology of events, probably to avoid having Bumppo ranging the Great Plains at over 90 years of age. This edition of "The Pathfinder" is the fourth volume in a new series of the complete Leatherstocking Tales released by Summit Classic Press.