The Home of Cooper and the Haunts of Leatherstocking.

Illustrated with engravings and two albumen photographs

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Description of a visit to the Cooperstown, New York home of American novelist, James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851). The author explored Cooperstown and its environs, which places were the inspiration for Cooper’s five-novel series, The Leatherstocking Tales.

The text is augmented with a portrait engraving of Cooper, after a daguerreotype by Mathew Brady, and with a double-page engraved view of Cooperstown and Otsego Lake. Additionally, there are two tipped-in albumen photographs.

The photographs depict a monumental shaft erected in Cooper’s memory at Lakewood Cemetery in Cooperstown. One shows the entire 25-foot high Italian marble monument. The other shows a close-up view of the statue surmounting the memorial. That statue, sculpted by Robert Eberhard Launitz (1806–1870), depicts “Leatherstocking” or “Natty Bumppo,” the hero of Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales.

No photographer is credited in the book. A comparison of the present albumen photographs of the column and “Leatherstocking” with other 19th century images of the same, might suggest that the albumen photographs are by Washington George Smith (1828–1893) of Cooperstown.

The last three pages of the book are an extended advertisement for “The Cooper House” hotel which stood at the highest point in Cooperstown.

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