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    Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
    Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
    Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
    Ebook41 pages27 minutes

    Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

    By Mark Twain

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 2004
    Author

    Mark Twain

    Mark Twain (1835-1910) was an American humorist, novelist, and lecturer. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, he was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, a setting which would serve as inspiration for some of his most famous works. After an apprenticeship at a local printer’s shop, he worked as a typesetter and contributor for a newspaper run by his brother Orion. Before embarking on a career as a professional writer, Twain spent time as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi and as a miner in Nevada. In 1865, inspired by a story he heard at Angels Camp, California, he published “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” earning him international acclaim for his abundant wit and mastery of American English. He spent the next decade publishing works of travel literature, satirical stories and essays, and his first novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). In 1876, he published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a novel about a mischievous young boy growing up on the banks of the Mississippi River. In 1884 he released a direct sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which follows one of Tom’s friends on an epic adventure through the heart of the American South. Addressing themes of race, class, history, and politics, Twain captures the joys and sorrows of boyhood while exposing and condemning American racism. Despite his immense success as a writer and popular lecturer, Twain struggled with debt and bankruptcy toward the end of his life, but managed to repay his creditors in full by the time of his passing at age 74. Curiously, Twain’s birth and death coincided with the appearance of Halley’s Comet, a fitting tribute to a visionary writer whose steady sense of morality survived some of the darkest periods of American history.

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    Reviews for Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

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    • 5/5
      Every now and then, I reread this because it's just so funny.
    • 5/5
      Every now and then, I reread this because it's just so funny.
    • 5/5
      Most scathing long review ever. It's funny, although Natasha wasn't impressed that I kept reading bits aloud. They weren't jokes.

      As a review it's kind of frustrating though. Hard to attach Twain's writing to specific places in Cooper's, because he takes everything out of context. I've no doubt that the sailing is all wrong, and possibly every other word, but it's hard to figure out the problems based only on Twain's review.

    Book preview

    Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences - Mark Twain

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

    by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

    Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

    Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #3172]

    Last Updated: October 29, 2012

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FENIMORE COOPER OFFENCES ***

    Produced by David Widger

    FENIMORE COOPER'S

    LITERARY OFFENCES

    by Mark Twain

              The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper's

              novels as artistic creations.  There are others of his works

              which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and

              scenes even more thrilling.  Not one can be compared with

              either of them as a finished whole.

              The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight.

              They were pure works of art.—Prof. Lounsbury.

              The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention.

              ... One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty

              Bumppo....

              The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the

              delicate art of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his

              youth up.—Prof. Brander Matthews.

              Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction

              yet produced by America.—Wilkie Collins.

    It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.

    Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.

    There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction—some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:

    1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.

    2. They require that the episodes of a

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