THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS: A Narrative of 1757. By The Author Of "The Pioneers

Philadelphia: H.C. Carey and I. Lea - Chestnut Street, 1826. 2 volumes. First Edition, First Issue with BAL's state A of the Copyright page in Vol. II and with other points called for. A COPY WITH FINE PROVENANCE AND PRESENTATION INSCRIPTIONS DATED JUNE 1826. With all the blanks called for including the conjugate for the title-page in Vol. II, the first issue points called for are present, Vol. I has the final "I" at "viii" and page 89 is incorrectly numbered 8vo, bound in the printer's original bindings of calf over blue paper covered boards. xi, [1], 282; [iv], 289 pp. A truly honest copy bound in calf and boards at the time of publication, with wear to the boards and calf backs, boards to Vol.II detached, the usual mellowing to the text-blocks, title-page to Vol.II with a closed tear, a pleasing copy of this monumental American novel, unsophisticated and very rare thus. A RARE TRUE FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE OF THIS GREAT CLASSIC, A TRUE CORNERSTONE OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, AND ONE OF THE MOST ELUSIVE OF THE IMPORTANT EARLY AMERICAN LITERARY CREATIONS.
James Fenimore Cooper was an avid reader in an age when most literature in America was imported from England. But as an author, he decided early on that he could well do a better job of writing for a growing and distinctly American readership than could his European counterparts. And so, he began the writing of his “Leather Stocking” series of which LAST OF THE MOHICANS is the second book after the introduction of Natty Bumppo in THE DEERSLAYER but the most famous of all the titles in the group and the “first in which the scout...was made the symbol of all that was wise, heroic and romantic in the lives and characters of the white men who made the American wilderness their home....This novel glorified for the many generations of readers, in England, France, Russia and at home, some aspects of American life that were unique to our cultural history.”
Cooper did far more than to imitate the European authors he had read, instead developing a great new American style by which quite quickly he became one of the first and greatest literary giants of the New World. His works reflect themes and emotions unique to a people living on the edge of the great American wilderness and Cooper would prove to be widely read, not only in America, but throughout all of Europe as well. ‘His achievement...the result of brilliant improvisation...was sustained...to the close of a hectic, crowded career. His...fame attests his power of invention...the creation of tension between different kinds of society, between society and the individual, between the settlement and the wilderness, and between civil law and natural rights as these suggest issues of moral and mythic import.’
Cooper's works remain to this day classics in American literature. "This is the... most famous of the Leatherstocking Tales". (Grolier 100 Influential American Books, 34).
Concerning the provenance, this copy has a gift presentation dated June, 1826 and is the copy of George C. Shattuck. George Cheyne Shattuck (1783–1854) graduated from Dartmouth College in 1806 and studied medicine at Harvard Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a degree from the latter in 1807. He practiced medicine in Boston, where in 1808 he published Three Dissertations on Boylston Prize Questions for the Years 1806 and 1807 (Sowerby, no. 986), a copy of which he sent to Thomas Jefferson in October 1808. Shattuck established an endowed professorship at the Harvard Medical School and was president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, 1836–40. DAB; Martin Kaufman and others, Dictionary of Medical Biography [1984], 2:675–6; Edward Jarvis, Memoir of the Life and Character of George Cheyne Shattuck, M.D. [1854]).
Dr. Shattuck was known to Thomas Jefferson who wrote to him in 1809: "Washington Mar. 11–09. Th: Jefferson presents his compliments to mr Shattuck and his thanks for the copy of the Boylston prize dissertation which he was so kind as to send him. he shall read it with pleasure in the leisure of Monticello, to which place he [is] now in the moment of departure. he prays mr Shattuck to accept the assurances of his respect.