Publisher's Synopsis
First volume in the series "Great American Novel". The idea of the Great American Novel (GAN) is the concept of a novel of high literary merit that shows the culture of the United States at a specific time in the country's history. The novel is presumably written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state, culture, and perspective of the common United States citizen. The author uses the literary work to identify and exhibit the language used by the people of the U.S. during that time and to capture the unique experience of living in the U.S. or one part of the U.S., especially at that time. In historical terms, it is sometimes equated as being the U.S. response to the national epic. The term Great American Novel comes directly from the title of an 1868 essay by American Civil War novelist John William De Forest. He defined the Great American novel as "the picture of the ordinary emotions and manners of American existence". In modern usage, the meaning of the term is often figurative and represents a canonical piece of literature, making it a literary benchmark emblematic of what defines U.S. literature in a given era. This series in eight volumes includes some books referenced as GAN: VOLUME 1. 1826 The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. VOLUME 2. 1850 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. VOLUME 3. 1851 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. VOLUME 4. 1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe . VOLUME 5. 1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / 1884 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. VOLUME 6. 1925 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. VOLUME 7. 1925 An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. VOLUME 8. 1932 Light in August / 1936 Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. This new edition is illustrated by N.C. Wyeth (Color illustrations) and followed by "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" by Mark Twain. A second version of this first volume is avaible with black and white illustrations by M. Andriolli & M. J. Huyot from the 1884 french edition. The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical novel written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826. It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known to contemporary audiences.The Pathfinder, published 14 years later in 1840, is its sequel. The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, both the French and the British used Native American allies, but the French were particularly dependent, as they were outnumbered in the Northeast frontier areas by British colonists. The novel is set primarily in the upper New York wilderness, detailing the transport of the two daughters of Colonel Munro, Alice, and Cora, to a safe destination at Fort William Henry. Among the caravan guarding the women are the frontiersman Natty Bumppo, Major Duncan Heyward, and the Indians Chingachgook and Uncas, the latter two being the novel's title characters. These characters are sometimes seen as a microcosm of the budding American society, particularly with regard to their racial composition.The novel has been one of the most popular English-language novels since its publication and is frequently assigned reading in American literature courses. It has been adapted numerous times and in many languages for films, TV movies, and cartoons.
