Historical and Literary Influences on the Genre

Natty "Hawkeye" Bumpo
Created by James Fenimore Cooper

Honorary private eyes throughout history for a thousand, Alex.

No, James Fenimore Cooper's NATTY BUMPO (AKA HAWKEYE) is not a private eye. But the five novels that comprise Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales form a major link between the chivalric tradition of the Arthurian legends and the modern myth of the private eye as knight (cf: Marlowe, Chandler, Archer, etc., etc., etc.), and as such, I think he deserves a mention. Ponderously brain-clogging prose, now, but Hawkeye, a "man without a cross", daring to "speak the truth consarnin' you or any man that lived," does all sorts of P.I. things, like being an outsider working mostly alone in a corrupt and violent world, trying to hold on to a personal code of honour, carrying a gun, and working on a wandering daughter job or two (or quest, if you like).

NOVELS
This is the order in which the stories take place. As you can see, they weren't written in that order...

• The Deerslayer (1841)
• The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
• The Pathfinder (1840)
• The Pioneers (1823)
• The Prairie (1827)

RELATED LINKS

• "Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" by Mark Twain
  Sure, he's the true ancestor of almost every private eye. But, as Bob Toomey pointed out on Rara Avis in February 2000, "it's hard to take Cooper seriously after reading Mark Twain's (essay). In fact, a lot of more recent writers could benefit from Twain's comments.