Satanstoe; Or, the Littlepage Manuscripts: A Tale of the Colony

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

Rating 3.9
Word count
1M words
Chapters
100

Tags

English Originals Historical Fiction Historical ReappraisalMilitary StrategyPortrait GalleryAdventure JourneyFate and FortunePower GameComplex HumanitySocial Observation

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.Satanstoe; Or, the Littlepage Manuscripts. A Tale of the Colony by CooperAuthor: Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Sep 1, 2005

Editor's review

Satanstoe is the opening novel of Cooper's Littlepage Manuscripts series, set in colonial New York; through a young protagonist's coming-of-age experiences and family records, it unfolds the life of early North American society. The work continues Cooper's strength in frontier and historical narrative, with detailed depictions of personal relationships and local customs, combining adventure with observations of the era. Reading it offers a sense of colonial settlers' daily life and social manners, and shows how land, status, and ethnic relations shape individual destiny. The electronic edition is convenient for searching and comparative reading, and serves as an introductory sample of American historical fiction and colonial literature. Readers are advised to understand it within the lineage of Cooper's frontier novels, note the sense of realism and distance created by the narrator's perspective and the manuscript frame, and revisit the characters' choices after reading with colonial history in mind.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the preface or publication notes first to understand the narrative frame of the Littlepage Manuscripts series before entering the text.
  2. Prepare a simple map and timeline of colonial New York to help locate the characters' movements and the background of events.
  3. Every few chapters, note changes in the narrator's perspective and observe how the manuscript device adjusts credibility.
  4. After finishing, compare with Cooper's other frontier novels to see similarities and differences in historical imagination and character portrayal.

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.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. 98
  99. 99
  100. 100

FAQ

What kind of work by Cooper is this book? It is a historical novel in Cooper's Littlepage Manuscripts series, set in colonial New York, and belongs to his frontier and historical narrative lineage rather than the Leatherstocking Tales, to which The Last of the Mohicans belongs.
How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for non-native readers? The text is nineteenth-century English, with sentence patterns and vocabulary characteristic of the period; non-native readers may need notes or a dictionary. Intermediate or higher English reading ability is recommended, along with a willingness to read slowly and check background knowledge.
What should I note when reading the electronic edition? The Project Gutenberg edition is mainly for convenient free reading, and formatting and notes vary by edition. It is advisable to use reading software that supports word lookup and bookmarks, and to search historical names and places as needed so as not to be interrupted by unfamiliar background.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

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.