The Prairie noble death and bury him. In the spirit of Daniel Boone, who is said to have thought "a population of ten to the square mile inconveniently crowded," "The Prairie" incorporates the historical phenomenon of the migration of settlers into the territories of the Louisiana Purchase. "The trapper" exemplifies frontiersmen like Daniel Boone in his quest for the wide open spaces of the American west. The Ishmael Bush party is an early wagon train. Novelist and social critic James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was the first major American writer to deal imaginatively with American life, notably in his five "Leatherstocking Tales". He
Tales from Bective Bridge Tales from Bective Bridge Tales from Bective Bridge is a collection of ten short stories concerning rural Ireland and its populace by the writer, Mary Lavin, born an American, who returned along with her family to Ireland in 1925. The collection was first published in 1942, with the assistance of Lord Dunsany, who also wrote the introduction to the collection when first published. The collection established her as a writer of note, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1943. The bridge of the title, Bective Bridge, lies not far from what was her home, Abbey Farm, near