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3 volumes. ix+336 pages; 309 pages; 341 pages. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 4 3/4") bound in full leather with black labels in gilt lettering to spine and blindstamped coat of arms to covers with gilt edge rule. Marbled page ends. (BAL 3838) First British edition.
The Red Rover is a novel by American writer James Fenimore Cooper originally published in Paris on November 27, 1827. It was published in London three days later on November 30, and was not published in the United States until January 9, 1828 in Philadelphia. Soon after its publication it was adapted for theater both in the United States and in England.Characters--The two black characters, Scipio Africanus, a free black sailor, and Cassandra, a slave attendant, throughout the novel remain distanced and separate from their white companions. While all the other main characters end the book with positive outcomes, Scipio finds a tragic end. Therman O'Daniel suggests, that though these are some of the first black characters to be seriously treated in American literature, they still receive unsatisfactory outcomes for all their actions.For Cooper, the sea novel offered an opportunity to blur social barriers between characters. This is particularly evident in his treatment of women, such as a girl disguised as a cabin boy in The Red Rover who is able to function within the crew, even though she is female.
James Fenimore Cooper was born on September 15, 1789 in Burlington, New Jersey, the eleventh of twelve children. When he was one year old, he moved with parents William and Elizabeth to Cooperstown on Ostego Lake in central New York. During Cooper's boyhood, there were few backwoods settlers left and even fewer Indians. However, Cooper's early experiences in this frontier town gave him the background knowledge used in the Pioneers (1923).
At twenty, he inherited a fortune from his father and married Susan Augusta De Lancey, the daughter of a wealthy family that had remained Loyalist during the Revolution. Cooper married De Lancey New Years Day, 1811 and for two years he led the life of a country gentleman. When all five of his older brothers died, leaving widows and children behind, Fenimore began searching for work and wealth. In 1820, Cooper's wife bet him that he could write a book better than the one she was reading.
While in New York, he founded the Bread and Cheese Club and became the center of a circle that included notable painters of the Hudson River School as well as writers like William Cullen Bryant. In 1823, Cooper published The Pioneers which eventually consisted of five books about Natty Bumppo called The Leatherstocking Tales. With this, he created what can be critically viewed as the first American novel and hero. He also brought up the thematic complexities of natural right versus legal right, order versus change, and wilderness versus civilization which still fill the pages of American writing today.
Returning to the US in 1833, Cooper was so hurt by a review that he penned A Letter to his Countrymen (1834) which was a bitter attack on American provincialism. He also became involved in disputes in Cooperstown where he was attacked by newspapers as a false aristocrat poisoned by European influences. In response, Cooper immersed himself in law suits aimed at gaining damages that would tame the irresponsibility of the press. Cooper established the principle that reviewers must work within the bounds of truth when they deal with an author rather than the book. Even with this scandal at his heels, Cooper continued to write a school primer, The American Democrat (1838) and three more Leatherstocking Tales: The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841).
Condition: Some signatures sprung, rubbing to extremities, corners bumped, some scuffing, book plates to front pastedowns. Volume one lacks spine label at volume number, inner hinge cracked. Volume 3 front heal hinge cracked else a good set housed in an acrylic case.
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