Gleanings in Europe, England
by James Fenimore Cooper
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Available editions of Gleanings in Europe, England
 |
9780873953672,
Hardcover,
State Univ of New York Pr,
1981
Other copies of 9780873953672 |
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9780873954594,
Paperback,
State Univ of New York Pr,
1981
Other copies of 9780873954594 |
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Customer Reviews
on Oct 18 2009, feeney said:
"Immediately after publishing his best known work, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, James Fenimore Cooper and family set sail for Europe. The year was 1826. Cooper was 36. He would spend over seven years abroad and write several novels and five travel books. The travel books covered France, England, Italy, the Rhineland, Switzerland and England. He wrote them years afterward in fairly short order, drawing on notes made at the time. ***
To me his ENGLAND travel book is a bit disappointing. He treats at fair length his several meetings with Sir Walter Scott and family -- a favorite subject of mine. But he does not sketch them in a way that makes them leap off the pages into your imagination. Fenimore Cooper had selected, deliberately, five or six months, the better part of one "social season" to live in and near London. He is invited out almost every day to balls, breakfasts, lunches and dinners. If he ever reciprocated an invitation, I do not recall his mentioning it. ***
His self-appointed mission appears to be to explain the USA to its parent country and to help Americans see what England is really like -- warts and all. Cooper feels that post-colonial America remains abjectly and in most areas indefensibly deferential to the UK. For their part the aristocratic Whigs he is most in contact with know very little of America and are content to deal in stereotypes. ***
The monied classes have taken over both houses of Parliament and therefore Britain itself. A couple of thousand men run the kingdom. Cooper lived in London not long before the great Reform Act of 1832. He foresaw the need for either constitutional change or revolt from beneath. But for the moment the landed gentry and the higher nobility ran England and Empire pretty much as they chose. And it was not a pretty sight. ***
All in all a book that would profit greatly by being abbreviated by a skilful editor. -OOO-
"
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