Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

By Mark Twain

"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" is an essay by Mark Twain, written as a satire and criticism of the writings of James Fenimore Cooper. Cooper was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century, whose historical romances depicting colonist and Indigenous characters from the 17th to the 19th centuries brought him fame and fortune. Twain draws on examples from The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder from Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. The essay is characteristic of Twain's biting, derisive and highly satirical style of literary criticism, a form he also used to deride such authors as Oliver Goldsmith, George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Mar 16, 2020
• ISBN: 4064066102319

Mark Twain

Mark Twain, who was born Samuel L. Clemens in Missouri in 1835, wrote some of the most enduring works of literature in the English language, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was his last completed book—and, by his own estimate, his best. Its acquisition by Harper & Brothers allowed Twain to stave off bankruptcy. He died in 1910. 

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Mark Twain

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

Published by Good Press, 2020

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EAN 4064066102319

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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.

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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.