Title: The Last of the Mohicans' A narrative of 1757.
Author: James Fenimore Cooper.
Publisher: John Miller.
Origin: London.
Publication date: 1826.
Edition: First English edition.

Description: 806 Pp. (V1; 237 p., V2; 276 p., 293 p.). 12mo. Custom contemporary 3/4 black leather hardcovers/board end caps, tan title label over spine bordered by gilt devices, matched marble boards/endpapers, new endpapers.

Measures: .75 (2.75 overall) W x 4.5 D x 7.25 H inches.

About the work and author: The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is an historical romance novel. It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales, and the best known to contemporary audiences. The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the North American theater of the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, both the French and the British used Native American allies, but the French were particularly dependent, as they were outnumbered in the Northeast frontier areas by the British. Specifically, the events of the novel are set immediately before, during, and after the Siege of Fort William Henry.

The novel has been one of the most popular English-language novels since its publication and is frequently assigned reading in American literature courses. It has been adapted numerous times and in many languages for films, TV movies, and cartoons.

At the time of Cooper's writing, many U.S. settlers believed and perpetuated the myth that Native Americans were disappearing, believing they would ultimately be assimilated or killed off entirely due to the genocidal structure of settler colonialism. Especially in the East, as Native Peoples' land was stolen and settled on in the name of U.S. expansion and Jeffersonian agrarianism, the narrative that many Native Peoples were "vanishing" was prevalent in both novels like Cooper's and local newspapers. This allowed settlers to view themselves as the original people of the land and reinforced their belief in European ethnic and racial superiority through, among other rationalizations, the tenets of scientific racism. In this way, Cooper was interested in the American progress narrative when more colonists were increasing pressure on Native Americans, which they, and Cooper, would then view as "natural".

Cooper grew up in Cooperstown, New York, which his father had established on what was then a western frontier settlement, which had developed after the Revolutionary War.