James Fenimore Cooper is regarded as America's first major novelist. Famous with his classic book, The Last of the Mohicans, he is best known for his sea adventure stories and the American frontier type of novels.
Early Life of James F. Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was born on September 15, 1789 in New Jersey, the son of a wealthy businessman and politician, grew up in Cooperstown, New York, a frontier town his father had founded. He was expelled from Yale University and went to sea before becoming a gentleman farmer.
Cooper began his literary career when his wife challenged him to write a book better than the one Cooper was reading. His first novel, Precaution, was a failure. His second book, The Spy, an exciting adventure tale about the American Revolution was so successful that Cooper gave up farming to become a professional writer at age 32.
The Last of the Mohicans and other Leatherstocking Tales
Cooper published two important books in American literature when he was 34. The Pilot was the first American sea tale while The Pioneers was the first of his "Leatherstocking Tales" adventure series. In this novels, he contrasts the lives of frontiersman Natty Bumppo and the Native-American friends with those of the pioneer settlers.
Bumppo lives free being close to nature, while the settlers bring "civilization" that destroys the wilderness. His other Leatherstocking Tales are The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer.
Cooper's Legacy to American Literature
Cooper's books were the first to give an accurate description of the American wilderness and pioneer life. They helped shape the 19th-century view of the American character and society and sparked interest in America's history.
James Fenimore Cooper died in New York at the age of 61, a day before his birthday, in September 14, 1851.
A Quote from J.F. Cooper
"The whole party moved swiftly through the narrow path, towards the north, leaving the healing waters to mingle unheeded with the adjacent brook, and the bodies of the dead to fester on the neighbouring mount, without the rites of sepulture – a fate but too common to the warriors of the woods to excite either commiseration or comment." ~ James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, 1826
Works by James Fenimore Cooper
- Precaution, 1821
- The Spy, 1821
- The Pilot, 1823
- The Pioneers, 1823
- The Last of the Mohicans, 1826
- The Red Rover, 1828
- Home as Found, 1838
- The Pathfinder, 1840
- The Deerslayer, 1841
- Satansloe, 1845
- The Redskins, 1846
- The Sea Lions, 1849
- The Ways of the Hour, 1850
Sources:
- Goring, Rosemary, Ed. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. New York: Larousse, 1994.
- McGovern, Una, Ed. Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers / Harrap Publishers, 2002.
- Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers. London: Carlton, 1997.
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