Cooper’s decision to return to Leatherstocking some thirteen years after he had recounted his death and burial in The Prairie must be credited in part to a suggestion from his English publisher, Richard Bentley. In a letter of April 6, 1839, Bentley proposed that the novelist “undertake a naval story on your own inland Seas.” Cooper readily complied. By June he was at work on what he described to Bentley as his “nautico-lake-savage romance,” The Pathfinder. On October 19 he reported to his wife from Philadelphia, where he had gone to be near his American publisher, that the first volume was being printed but that the second was not yet written. He finished the novel in December, and the printing was completed in January 1840. To protect the British copyright, the English edition, published by Richard Bentley February 24, 1840, preceded the American edition, published March 14 in Philadelphia by Lea and Blanchard.
Fortunately, the holograph manuscript of The Pathfinder: or, The Inland Sea survives and is now in the University of Virginia Library. It serves as the copy-text for the SUNY edition. The first American edition was set from Cooper’s manuscript and is the first authorial edition. Cooper made many alterations in the proofs of the first edition to simplify expression, clarify meaning, improve diction, add information, correct names, and, as was habitual with him, increase and refine dialect forms. The manuscript (which was needed to protect the British copyright) and proof sheets were then sent on to Bentley. Bentley, following Cooper’s explicit instructions, set the English edition from the Lea and Blanchard proofs. In the rush to complete the work, Cooper made corrections in the proof sheets of the introduction sent to England that he apparently failed to make in the American edition. The introduction in the English edition, therefore, is authoritative. The second authorial edition appeared in Putnam’s Author’s Revised Edition in 1851. Though Cooper apologized in the preface to that edition for the many errors remaining in the first edition, most of them the result of compositorial misreadings, this second edition retained most of the first edition’s misreadings and introduced nearly two hundred non-authorial readings. Cooper restored forty-nine manuscript words or phrases, and corrected dialect forms: for example, “real” becomes “raal,” “concerning” becomes “consarning,” “girls” becomes “gals.” He also added a new preface, as he had done for other works in this edition. As a result, the text of The Pathfinder, like that of the other Leatherstocking Tales, did not achieve an approximation of what would have been Cooper’s final intentions during his lifetime. The SUNY textual editor, Richard Dilworth Rust, collated all the relevant documents and determined which variants were intended by Cooper, and which were caused by compositorial misreading or editorial intervention. The intended emendations were then inserted into the copy-text.
Presumably Cooper was well into the composition of The Deerslayer: or, The First War-Path on November 10, 1840, when he wrote to Richard Bentley proposing terms for the novel, which, he indicated, “will contain the early life of Leatherstocking—a period that is only wanted to fill up his career.” At the end of January 1841, he informed Bentley that the work was nearly half finished and that he was considering several alternative titles: “‘Judith and Esther, or, the Girls of the Glimmerglass.’—‘Wah!-Ta-Wah!, or, Hist!-Oh!-Hist!’ ‘The Deerslayer, or a Legend of the Glimmerglass.’ &c &c. In some respects I prefer the last—” By early July, Bentley had received the manuscript and duplicate proof sheets, together with Cooper’s request that the novel be published as early in September as possible. Lea and Blanchard published The Deerslayer in Philadelphia on August 27, 1841; Richard Bentley brought out the British edition on September 7. (In this case, Bentley seems not to have had any problem in maintaining the British copyright.)
The copy-text for The Deerslayer is the corrected holograph manuscript, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, from which the first American edition was set. Because of Cooper’s overcrowded and interlineated manuscript, the compositors at Lea and Blanchard made a number of significant misreadings that Cooper, despite his careful proofreading, failed to correct. Though no page proofs of the Lea and Blanchard edition are known to survive, it is clear from Cooper’s correspondence that he made revisions that were incorporated into that text. The Lea and Blanchard edition of 1841 is therefore the first authorial edition. The second is the Putnam’s Author’s Revised Edition of 1850. The Deerslayer was the first of the Leatherstocking Tales to appear in this edition, and Cooper wrote for it a general “Preface to the Leather-Stocking Tales.” This preface has been included in the SUNY edition. As with the other Leatherstocking Tales in the Putnam series, the revisions were not extensive and were limited mainly to correcting grammatical errors, tightening style, and, as always, insisting on the preservation of dialect forms. The SUNY textual editors, Lance Schachterle, Kent P. Ljungquist, and James A. Kilby, collated all the relevant documents and determined which variants were intended by Cooper.
The standards for American English continue to fluctuate and in some ways were conspicuously different in earlier periods from what they are now. In nineteenth-century writings, for example, a word might be spelled in more than one way, even in the same work, and such variations might be carried into print. Commas were sometimes used expressively to suggest the movements of voice, and capitals were sometimes meant to give significances to a word beyond those it might have in its uncapitalized form. Since modernization would remove such effects, this volume preserves the spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and wording of the SUNY edition, which strives to be as faithful to Cooper’s usage as surviving evidence permits.
This volume offers the reader the results of the most detailed scholarly effort thus far made to establish the texts of The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer. The present edition is concerned only with representing the texts of these editions; it does not attempt to reproduce features of the typographic design—such as the display capitalization of chapter openings. Epigraphs from Shakespeare have been keyed by the SUNY editors to The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974); other epigraphs are keyed to unspecified “standard editions,” “first editions,” or “early American editions” available to Cooper at the time he wrote the Tales. The texts in this volume follow exactly the SUNY The Pathfinder (first printing) and The Deerslayer (page proofs), except for the following errors: 87.4, woiuld; 96.17, hand.; 122.33, trip it.”; 122.34, serjeant; 135.10, deceived.; 151.30, ‘Put; 153.4, to the; 157.15, Amerians; 215.11, thik; 219.17, companion-way. Mr. Muir; 279.18, Better; 279.24, serjeant; 279.31, is; 280.25, you hardy; 293.2, where; 325.30, solutide; 334.36, Eau-douce; 372.20, civilization.; 380.13, rúse; 392.13–15, Mabel—” said the Scout, in an earnest but low voice, seizing her by an arm.____ “This will not do. Sartain; 433.24, hyprocisy; 435.11, Violà; 451.6, fully at. (These errors in the SUNY edition will be corrected in future printings.) Error corrected ninth printing: 312.27, valuable.
Notes
In the notes below, the numbers refer to page and line of the print edition (the line count includes chapter headings). No note is made for material included in a standard desk-reference book. Notes at the foot of the page are Cooper’s own. For additional textual and explanatory notes, see the relevant volumes in the SUNY edition.
THE PATHFINDER
5.1 Preface] Added in the Author’s Revised Edition, 1851.
10.21 Tuscaroras] Originally from North Carolina and linguistically related to the Mohawks, the Tuscaroras suffered from the white settlers’ unfair trading practices and enslavement of their children. Subsequently decimated in warfare with the whites, they were driven north early in the eighteenth century, taking refuge with the Iroquois and later becoming the Sixth Nation of their Confederacy.
21.1–2 Prophet . . . Delawares] Tamenund. See The Last of the Mohicans, 811.3.
24.19 kid and can] A kid was a small tub in which sailors received their food; a can was a small or moderate-sized vessel used as a drinking cup.
37.25 Fort Stanwix] A colonial outpost near the site of
present-day Rome, N.Y., which controlled the main route from the Hudson to Lake Ontario. Established originally by the French, it fell into disrepair and was rebuilt by the English in 1758. During the Revolution it was known as Fort Schuyler.
57.22–23 That . . . again.”] Chapter XXXII in The Last of the Mohicans (death of Cora).
79.5 Ty!”] Ticonderoga.
99.35 sarvice . . . officer] Major Oliver Effingham. See The Pioneers.
111.22 Oswego] Established on Lake Ontario in 1722 by the English, Oswego had orginally served as a vital trading post for the Albany fur trade.
122.35 Thousand Islands] A group of more than 1500 islands in the St. Lawrence where it issues from Lake Ontario.
180.23 Powles . . . first rate] Paulus Hook, as it was known in the eighteenth century, is a low point of land protruding into the Hudson River at what is now Jersey City, N.J., and was the location of a British fort captured during the Revolution. A piragua (or, in the French adaptation from the Spanish, pirogue) was a dugout canoe used by the Caribs in British Guiana. A “first rate” is a warship deemed superior in size and armament.
220.12–13 German . . . throne] Hanover was from 1692 to 1806 an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire. The house of Hanover secured the British succession, by virtue of the Act of Settlement of 1701, in favor of the electress Sophia (1630–1714), granddaughter of James I of Great Britain, who married Ernest Augustus, Duke of Hanover (1629–98), in 1658. Sophia’s son, the elector George Louis (1660–1727), became George I, inaugurating a 123-year-long personal union between Great Britain and Hanover.
316.22 the Santa Cruz] St. Croix rum from the Virgin Islands.
318.16 Caput] The direct descendants of Hugh Capet, crowned in 987, ruled continuously until 1328 and the death of Charles IV. Cap’s “Lewises” reigned in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. “Kaput” is German for “finished” or “vanquished.”
348.8–11 “She’ll . . . Muir.”] Sir William Wallace (1272?–1305) drove the English out of Scotland in 1297, but was defeated the following year and ultimately executed. His compatriot, the eighth Robert de Bruce (1274–1329), was crowned King at Scone in 1306. Recognized by the Scottish clergy in 1310, his defeat of a larger English force at Bannockburn in 1314 completed the liberation of Scotland and led to acceptance by the Pope in 1323 and a peace treaty with England in 1328. At Culloden Moor, in Invernesshire, on April 16, 1746, the Hanoverian forces under the Duke of Cumberland defeated the Highland clans led by the Young Pretender, Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720–88), widely known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, bringing to an end the Jacobite uprising of 1745.
382.4 castle . . . Beard] In Charles Perrault’s version of the Blue Beard story (first translated into English in 1729), Blue Beard’s wife, threatened with imminent death because she disobeyed her husband’s orders and discovered his secret, stations her sister on the castle tower to watch for rescue by her brothers. Periodically she calls to “Anne, sister Anne” for word that her brothers are in sight.
407.17–18 Prince . . . himself.”] Francois Eugene de Savoie-Carignan (1663–1736), Prince of Savoy, and John Churchill (1650–1722), first Duke of Marlborough, commanded the Austrian and English forces that defeated the French and Bavarians at the battle of Blenheim (August 13, 1704), during the War of the Spanish Succession. John Dalrymple (1673–1747), second Earl of Stair, was an aide-de-camp to Marlborough.
431.1–5 name . . . day.] The name Sanglier means “wild boar.” John Butler (1728–94), Loyalist, soldier, and Indian agent, formed a group called Butler’s Rangers, drawn from Loyalists in Niagara, to harass Continental settlements. He was held responsible for the atrocities committed by his Indian allies following the capitulation of Fort Forty, in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1778. His son, Captain Walter N. Butler (d. 1781), led his father’s Rangers in the attack on Cherry Valley, New York (November 11, 1778). He was blamed for the massacre committed there by his Iroquois allies under the famous Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea). Cooper probably had the younger Butler in mind.
THE DEERSLAYER
485.1 Preface] This preface appeared in the first edition.
489.1–2 Preface . . . Tales] Written for the collected edition in 1850, where for the first time the Tales were arranged according to the age of Leatherstocking.
492.15 One . . . critics] Lewis Cass, writing in North American Review, April 1828.
493.1 Preface . . . Deerslayer] Written for the 1850 edition.
496.6–7 residence . . . Rensselaers] The earliest home of the Van Rensselaer family, built as a fort on the east side of the Hudson at Greenbush, underwent reconstructions, but the ground floor retained many of the early loopholes.
508.4 a Moravian] Deerslayer had been educated by the Moravians, who carried on a mission among the Delawares. A reformed church founded by the followers of John Huss in 1457, sixty years before Luther’s Reformation, the Moravians emigrated to America in the mid-eighteenth century and founded a colony at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
582.18 “a good . . . world.”] The Merchant of Venice, V.i.90–91: Portia: “How far that little candle throws his beams! / So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
712.25 Yengeese*] This is the only footnote that appeared in the first edition.
759.30 Salvator Rosa] Salvator Rosa (1615–73) was an Italian painter of the Neapolitan school whose landscapes were much admired in Cooper’s day. Sir Joshua Reynolds spoke of his art as having “the sort of dignity which belongs to savage and uncultivated nature.”
Footnotes
1. Lest the reader suppose we are dealing purely in fiction, the writer will add that he has known a long thirty two pounder carried over these same falls, in perfect safety.
2. This circumstance is a real incident, taken from the “American Lady” of Mrs. Grant, of Laggan.
3. It is no more than justice to say that the Greenbush Van Rensselaers claim to be the oldest branch of that ancient and respectable family.
4. Lest the similarity of the names should produce confusion, it may be well to say that the Uncas here mentioned is the grandfather of him who plays so conspicuous a part in the Last of the Mohicans.
5. It is singular there should be any question concerning the origin of the well known sobriquet of “Yankees.” Nearly all the old writers, who speak of the Indians first known to the Colonists, make them pronounce the word “English,” as “Yengeese.” Even at this day, it is a provincialism of New England to say “English” instead of “Inglish” and there is a close conformity of sound between “English” and “Yengeese,” more especially if the latter word, as was probably the case, be pronounced short. The transition from “Yengeese,” thus pronounced, to “Yankees” is quite easy. If the former is pronounced “Yangis” it is almost identical with “Yankees,” and Indian words have seldom been spelt as they are pronounced. Thus the scene of this tale is spelt “Otsego,” and is properly pronounced “Otsago.” The liquids of the Indians would easily convert “En” into “Yen.”
6. The Otsego is a favorite place for the caravan keepers to let their elephants bathe. The writer has seen two at a time, since the publication of this book, swimming about in company.
THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA SERIES
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1. Herma
n Melville: Typee, Omoo, Mardi
2. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches
3. Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose
4. Harriet Beecher Stowe: Three Novels
5. Mark Twain: Mississippi Writings
6. Jack London: Novels and Stories
7. Jack London: Novels and Social Writings
8. William Dean Howells: Novels 1875–1886
9. Herman Melville: Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick
10. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Collected Novels
11. Francis Parkman: France and England in North America, vol. I
12. Francis Parkman: France and England in North America, vol. II
13. Henry James: Novels 1871–1880
14. Henry Adams: Novels, Mont Saint Michel, The Education
15. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures
16. Washington Irving: History, Tales and Sketches
17. Thomas Jefferson: Writings
18. Stephen Crane: Prose and Poetry
19. Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales
20. Edgar Allan Poe: Essays and Reviews
21. Mark Twain: The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It
22. Henry James: Literary Criticism: Essays, American & English Writers
23. Henry James: Literary Criticism: European Writers & The Prefaces
24. Herman Melville: Pierre, Israel Potter, The Confidence-Man, Tales & Billy Budd
25. William Faulkner: Novels 1930–1935
26. James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales, vol. I
27. James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales, vol. II
28. Henry David Thoreau: A Week, Walden, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod
29. Henry James: Novels 1881–1886
30. Edith Wharton: Novels
31. Henry Adams: History of the U.S. during the Administrations of Jefferson
The Leatherstocking Tales II Page 120
