AMS Studies in the Nineteenth-century
1 primary work • 5 total works
Book 58
Homeward Bound is an unusual mixture of sea-going romance and social commentary which grew out of Fenimore Cooper's project for its sequel, Home as Found (also available in this series).
This edition of Cooper's 1821 novel contains historical background, explanatory notes, textual commentary and emendations. The novel itself explores the ambiguities of life in the neutral ground of revolutionary New York.
First published in 1844, this narrative chronicles the adventures of Miles Wallingford, who runs away to sea to embark on a career as a merchant sailor. He runs the hazards of life at sea and intervals ashore involve him in the delights of romance and perils of legal and financial intrigue.
This short novel is one of Fenimore Cooper's more scathing social satires, and also one of his more daring experiments in fictional form; for perhaps both reasons, it has always been hard to find in print.
Written during the explosion of Cooper's naval prose in the early 1840s, ""Ned Myers; or, a Life before the Mast"" (1843) celebrates the maritime career of a Nova Scotia runaway turned Yankee sailor. In the voice of Myers himself - a genuine historic personage present at several important episodes of American naval history - Cooper interweaves his own vision of the growth of the early navy and life at sea with the dictated recollections of the 'old salt'. As an experiment in prose, ""Ned Myers"" led Cooper to the fictional narrators of Afloat and Ashore (1844).