After the success of The Spy (1821), The Pioneers (1823), and The Pilot (1824), Cooper planned an ambitious series of historical novels, “Legends of the Thirteen Republics”, and set about researching the first. He visited Boston, mapped battlegrounds, and read both American and British sources to prepare of an accurate account of the siege of the city in 1775-76 during the American Revolution. The result was Lionel Lincoln (1825). Cooper then abandoned the project. Instead, he returned to a suggestion made by his friend Stanley, afterward Lord Derby. In 1824, on an excursion with others to Lake George, Stanley suggested that Cooper set a story at the strange caverns at Glens Falls. For this book, Cooper wrote feverishly in more ways than one. He had a severe attack of fever, and he wrote the...
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Citation: Daly, Robert. "The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 February 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=408, accessed 14 December 2025.]
