Time has favored those writers: while readers in the twentieth century discovered the genius of those writers, however, they neglected Cooper's. Yet, readers today, after some adjustment of their expectations and a little practice with Cooper's syntax, could still read eight or ten of his tales with real pleasure. And the student of American literature and history has many reasons to read him. As the first popularly successful novelist of America, Cooper contributed greatly to the literary and cultural life of this country. His single greatest achievement, as he himself recognized, was in creating the character of Natty Bumppo, the central figure of the five Leather-Stocking Tales. Backwoodsman, hunter, warrior, prophet of nature, and frontiersman at home with Native Americans, Natty has stepped from the pages of the tales to assume a permanent place in the national imagination. He has many descendants among the heroes of American fiction, movies, and television. The Leather-Stocking Tales gave millions of readers around the world their first introduction to the mythological realm of the pathless wilderness--a realm of nightmare, where silent Mingoes lurk in the depths of the gloomy forest; of dream, where a stately buck stoops to drink at the margin of an enchanted lake; and, above all, of freedom, where the human ego can find adventures commensurate with its narcissistic longings.
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