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 "The Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper fired the imagination of countless British lads during the nineteenth century. Many young readers became fixated with the American frontier, which, they naively assumed, must resemble the wilderness depicted in these romantic novels. Though Cooper was the most influential author whose works encouraged affluent British readers to visit the American West, by no means was he the only one. A steady stream of books describing Western travel and exploration appeared in London through the first half of nineteenth century. Their stories of thrilling adventure confirmed the boyhood fantasies of their readers and fueled latent desires to visit the West. For young, well-bred, and well-to-do British men from the late 1830s to the eve of the American Civil War, a trip to the West became akin to the Grand Tour of Europe, that is, a good way to finish off a proper education." |
