Definitive Edition of James Fenimore Cooper's The Pathfinder

FAIN: FT-12424-75

Richard D. Rust
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1350)

P.I. edited Washington Irving's Astoria as part of The Complete Works of Washington Irving, and is now editing James Fenimore Cooper's The Pathfinder as part of a ten-volume series of Cooper's best-known works, scheduled to be published by the State University of New York Press. P.I. will collate all available forms of the work, establish a definitive reading text which comes closest to the author's intentions, write a historical essay and a textual essay, provide annotations for the text, and compose various textual lists. Research and editing project has a direct relationship to the bicentennial observance of the American Revolution. The Pathfinder (1840) illustrates the roots of national character as well as tendencies of American destiny.