News & Events
Research Projects Under Way
"Cooper Biography"
Wayne Franklin (University of Connecticut) is under contract with Yale University Press to publish his two-volume scholarly biography of Cooper. Volume One was published in 2007 and Volume Two is anticipated in several years.. We now have, at last, a massively-researched and most-welcome biography of Cooper, which places him firmly in the center of the literary, cultural, and political life of the antebellum Republic.
"Cooper Session Proposed for Boston MLA in January 2013."
Lance Schachterle has issued the following call for papers for the 2013 convention. "Finishing the Cooper Edition: This session will discuss strategies for scholarly publications appropriate for editing the remaining Cooper titles, some of which exist only in first editions." One page abstract due to Schachterle (les@wpi.edu) by 15 March 2012.
A MLA CLP does not guarantee a session; it merely solicits interest. If enough develops, then the sessions proposer must submit a detailed justification and program for possible inclusion in the conference.
The context here is that, as other entries on the website indicate, the Cooper Edition has a comparatively small number of Cooper's 32 novels left to assign. For several of these, there are only first American and British editions, and little or no manuscripts. We believe enough material exists to warrant a CSE inspection and seal, but the projects would involve far less critical editions that most of our titles.
I addressed these issues as follows in my recent annual report to the Cooper Editions editorial board:
Editing Works with Few or No Witnesses Other than the First Printed Edition.
Jay Elliott, chief textual editor and I have discussed seeking the CSE seal for projects which may have only a single authorial witness, the first printed text. For some important late novels like Wing and Wing (no known holograph; 1842), The Crater (no known holograph; 1847), and The Sea Lions (3 AMS pages; 1849) we have little if any of the holograph nor authorial editions after the first American and British printings.
CE textual editor Robert D. Madison has raised the possibility of facsimile editions for these, with thorough Historical Introductions and necessarily brief Textual Commentaries. Alternatively, CE chief textual editor James Elliott suggested scanning the single printed witness to make it consistent with other AMS volumes, and carrying out whatever light but important critical editing would be required to correct errors and respond to possible variants in the plates. And collations would probably show variants, some possibly authorial, between the first American and first British editions.
Beyond these novels, there would remain a half dozen or so worthwhile projects involving various of Cooper's historical and polemical works; critical editions of A Letter to His Countrymen (1834) and of The American Democrat (1838) would be invaluable to scholars, though again no holographs or revised editions are known to provide witnesses for critical editions. Cooper's various nautical writings in the late 1830s and 1840s might be candidates for full scholarly editions.
The intent of our session, then, is to elicit suggestions from new or experienced editors about which of the remaining Cooper titles should receive full-scale editing and publications with the CSE seal by AMS Press, New York. I assume all the remaining unpublished novels are candidates (which would include Precaution, 1820, and Mercedes of Castile, 1841), for which full manuscripts exist.
We would also be grateful for any proposals from scholars who might propose digital editions of smaller texts, especially those that exist in the Cooper family papers at Yale, the American Antiquarian Society, or elsewhere.
I will be happy to discuss by email any suggestions from anyone interested in proposing a topic for the MLA session, or indeed, working on any of the materials remaining that have not been assigned editors.
Call for Papers
The James Fenimore Cooper Society organizes papers for the annual American Literature Association Conference, and assists with the biennial Cooper Conference at Oneonta and Cooperstown, planned for July 2013. For information, contact me at les@wpi.edu.
"Leather-Stocking Redux."
Jeffrey Walker has edited a collection of ten new essays by leading nationally- and internationally-known Cooper scholars, complemented by a critical introduction, a bibliography of works cited, and an index to themes and characters. The volume (approximately 250 projected pages in print) addresses such broad issues as our concern with race, gender, and ethnicity in Cooper’s world and its relationship to ours. The volume appeared in 2011; for the prospectus, read more... [PDF]
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