Miles Wallingford

Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 922K words
Chapters: 93

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Miles Wallingford by James Fenimore CooperAuthor: Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Feb 1, 2004

Editor's review

Miles Wallingford is one of Cooper's later sea novels, centering on the protagonist's experiences at sea and touching on maritime life, merchant shipping, and the legal and moral questions of the maritime order of the time. Cooper is known for his depictions of the sea and the details of shipboard life; this book continues his careful portrayal of seamanship, crew relations, and the risks of the sea, while placing personal choices within the entanglement of family, property, and public responsibility. The narrative pace has the unhurried quality of a nineteenth-century novel, with considerable dialogue and nautical terminology, offering readers familiar with Cooper or interested in the maritime literary tradition an experience that combines adventure with social observation. As a public-domain electronic text, it is easy to search and compare, making it suitable for classroom excerpts or thematic reading. Note that some ideas and expressions in the book bear the imprint of the author's era.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy sea adventure and nautical fiction
Students and teachers studying Cooper or nineteenth-century American literature
Readers interested in maritime law and the details of merchant shipboard life
Readers hoping to broaden their reading of public-domain English novels

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer fast-paced contemporary genre fiction with strong plot momentum
Beginners unfamiliar with nautical terminology who are unwilling to consult notes
Readers expecting a fully modern annotated translation

Reading tips

First learn some basic background on Cooper's sea novels, then follow the plot of this book.
Keep a running record of nautical terms and look them up together after finishing, to avoid frequent interruptions.
Go chapter by chapter and sort out the characters' relationships and the progress of the property and legal disputes, to keep hold of the main thread.
Read it alongside Cooper's other sea novels such as The Pilot to observe changes in his subjects and methods.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What kind of work by Cooper is this book?

It belongs to Cooper's series of sea novels, set mainly at sea and in maritime life, while also involving social issues such as property, law, and family relations. Compared with his frontier subjects, this book focuses more on shipboard details and the maritime order, and is best understood within the context of nineteenth-century American maritime literature.

Can I understand it without nautical knowledge?

Yes, but it takes some patience. There is a good deal of shipboard operation and terminology, and unfamiliarity with seamanship does not prevent you from following the characters and main plot, though your understanding of details will suffer. It is advisable to prepare a glossary or choose an annotated edition, and in passages dense with terminology you can skip ahead first and grasp the plot and character relationships.

Is this book suitable for classroom teaching?

As a public-domain electronic text, it is easy to search, copy, and assign in sections, making it suitable as selected reading for courses on American literature or maritime literature. Teachers can design discussion questions around the nautical descriptions, legal disputes, and the characters' ethical choices, and remind students to note the limitations of the work's period ideas.

Do I need to read other works by Cooper before this book?

No. The plot of this book is relatively independent, and reading it directly will not leave you unable to understand it for lack of earlier works. However, if you first read one or two of Cooper's representative works and become familiar with his narrative pace, characterization, and style of maritime description, you will find it easier to get into this book.

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About the author

Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851 Author

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was an American novelist, with 47 works held in this collection. He is best known for the Leatherstocking Tales, among which The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is the most widely read; the series also includes The Pioneers, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer, all centered on frontier and wilderness life. Cooper's fiction often draws on the North American frontier, the sea, and historical events, with intricate plots and vivid characters, and it has had a lasting influence on later American adventure and frontier novels. Some of his works are classified here under inspirational growth. Because public information is limited, biographical details are omitted, and this introduction focuses on his subjects, style, and influence.