Initial Responses
The critical response to Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans was overwhelmingly positive. An American work of fiction was at last praised on both sides of the Atlantic for its realism, adventure, and characters. The editor of Escritor called Cooper "a genuine talent who has successfully bound realism in the guise of romance." The Literary Gazette praised his "ability to maintain interest and paint vivid characters and scenery," while Literary World referred to his "real life scenery created with faithfully presented narrative." New York Review and Atheneum Magazine described Cooper as "an imaginative writer," exhibiting "extraordinary power." The Liverpool Repository stated that Cooper was superior to Sir Walter Scott as an imparter of information.

Cooper's characters excited reviewers, but there was no consensus as to which were the best. His portraits of Indian life were praised by the Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review and Monthly Review. Panaromic Miscellany went so far as to call it "the most vivid and truthful portrait of Indians that has yet been written." New York Review and Atheneum Magazine claimed that Cora and Alice Munro were "delightful creations." Some critics and reviewers tempered their praise with criticism. The Monthly Review stated that while "Cooper has woven a tale of incredible suspense," it "need not have culminated in the tragedy that it did." The United States Literary Gazette said, "while The Last of the Mohicans is superior of those of a similar type that have preceded it," the book is "capable of improvement." The writer went on to criticize the plot as "simple" with "little variety." The New York Review and Atheneum Magazine said that "if the author fails at all, it is in his ability to keep his characters' motives consistent with their actions."

Some condemned the novel entirely. W. H. Gardiner, writing in The North American Review, said that "Cooper goes out of way to put his characters into impossible situations that do nothing for the plot except clutter it with far too much action." One reviewer, in United States Review and Literary Gazette, attacked the author's research. Instead of faulting Cooper's acknowledged sources, however, he blamed Cooper for using the "absurdities and improbabilities" of Heckewelder's An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs, of the Indian Nations, Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighbouring States. John Neal, writing for the London Magazine, referred to The Last of the Mohicans as "the Last American Novel," condemning it as "the worst of Cooper's novels—tedious, improbable, unimaginative and redundant." In fact, Cooper's novel was so well known that two of his contemporaries published parodies of him: William Makepeace Thackeray's "The Stars and Stripes" in Punch (October 9, 1847), and Bret Hart's Muck-a-Muck: A Modern Indian Novel after Cooper.

A Reputation in Decline
Cooper's literary reputation seemed untouchable, but had declined even before his death in 1851. Thomas Lounsbury savaged both the man and his work, and Cooper's critical demise was assured and hastened by Mark Twain's "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," published in the July 1895 American Review. By the turn of the century, The Last of the Mohicans had become nothing more than a boy's adventure story. The criticism continued in the twentieth century. James Holden chronicled a list of Cooper's historical inaccuracies in his 1917 book, The Last of the Mohicans: Cooper's Historical Inventions, and His Cave. John A. Inglis, of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland , took Cooper to task for his use of Colonel Munro, noting that with the exception of his nationality, Cooper got nothing about the historical figure correct, even misspelling...