Mark Twain was not a man you wanted to anger. Famous both as one of the finest writers in the English language, but also one of its fiercest and most scathing, when he died he left behind a vast litany of letters, reviews and stories dedicated to the furious demolition of those he disagreed with.

One of Twain's most famous efforts is his 1895 screed against the works of frontier novelist James Fenimore Cooper (he wrote Last of the Mohicans), and in particular The Deerslayer, his final novel. Critically acclaimed upon its release, Twain saw in Fenimore's work everything that was wrong with American writing in his time. So he released "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences", a 12-page exquisitely detailed and clinical dismantling of every facet of Fenimore's prose. The entire thing is worth reading, but his detailing of the 18 of 19 rules of literary fiction that The Deerslayer has broken is a masterclass. We're just glad he's not around to cast his withering eye over our own work.