American Literature
:: James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, which many consider to be his masterpiece.
:: Life and work
Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, and later settled in Scarsdale, Westchester County, New York.
He joined the Navy and obtained the rank of Midshipman before leaving in 1811.
He anonymously published his first book, Precaution (1820). He soon issued several others: The Spy (1821); The Pioneers (1823), the first of the Leatherstocking series featuring Natty Bumppo, the resourceful American woodsman at home with the Delaware Indians and especially their chief Chingachgook, not wholly an Indian nor a white man; and The Pilot (1824); Lionel Lincoln (1825) ; Last of the Mohicans (1826), a book that in the nineteenth century was one of the most widely read American novels. The book was written in a second-story storefront-apartment in Warrensburg, New York, just north of where most of the book's plot takes place. Leaving America for Europe Cooper published in Paris The Prairie (1826) and The Red Rover (1828).
These novels were succeeded by: The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829); by The Notions of a Traveling Bachelor (1828); and by The Waterwitch (1830), one of his many sea-stories. In 1830 he entered the lists as a party writer; in a series of letters to the National, a Parisian journal, he defended the United States against a string of charges brought against them by the Revue Britannique. For the rest of his life he continued skirmishing in print, sometimes for the national interest, sometimes for that of the individual, and not infrequently for both at once.
This opportunity to make a political confession of faith appears not only to have fortified him in his own convictions, but to have inspired him with the idea of elucidating them for the public through the medium of his art. His next three novels, The Bravo (1831), The Heidenmauer (1832) and The Headsman: or the Abbaye of Vigneron (1833), were expressions of Cooper's republican convictions. The Bravo depicted Venice as a place where a ruthless oligarchy lurks behind the mask of the "serene republic." All were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic, though The Bravo was a critical failure in the United States.[1]
In 1833 Cooper returned to America and immediately published A Letter to My Countrymen, in which he gave his own version of the controversy in which he had been engaged and sharply censured his compatriots for their share in it. This attack he followed up with The Monikins (1835) and The American Democrat (1835); with several sets of notes on his travels and experiences in Europe, among which may be remarked his England (1837), in three volumes, and with Homeward Bound and Home as Found (1838), notable as containing a highly idealized portrait of himself.
All these books tended to increase the ill feeling between author and public; the Whig press was virulent and scandalous in its comments, and Cooper plunged into a series of actions for libel. Victorious in all of them, he returned to his old occupation with something of his original vigor and success. A History of the Navy of the United States (1839), supplemented (1846) by a set of Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers, was succeeded by The Pathfinder (1840), the fourth "Leatherstocking" novel; by Mercedes of Castile (1840); The Deerslayer (1841), the last in the series of books about Natty Bumppo; by The Two Admirals and by Wing and Wing (1842); by Wyandotte, The History of a Pocket Handkerchief, and Ned Myers (1843); and by Afloat and Ashore, or the Adventures of Miles Wallingford (1844).
He joined the Navy and obtained the rank of Midshipman before leaving in 1811.
He anonymously published his first book, Precaution (1820). He soon issued several others: The Spy (1821); The Pioneers (1823), the first of the Leatherstocking series featuring Natty Bumppo, the resourceful American woodsman at home with the Delaware Indians and especially their chief Chingachgook, not wholly an Indian nor a white man; and The Pilot (1824); Lionel Lincoln (1825) ; Last of the Mohicans (1826), a book that in the nineteenth century was one of the most widely read American novels. The book was written in a second-story storefront-apartment in Warrensburg, New York, just north of where most of the book's plot takes place. Leaving America for Europe Cooper published in Paris The Prairie (1826) and The Red Rover (1828).
These novels were succeeded by: The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829); by The Notions of a Traveling Bachelor (1828); and by The Waterwitch (1830), one of his many sea-stories. In 1830 he entered the lists as a party writer; in a series of letters to the National, a Parisian journal, he defended the United States against a string of charges brought against them by the Revue Britannique. For the rest of his life he continued skirmishing in print, sometimes for the national interest, sometimes for that of the individual, and not infrequently for both at once.
This opportunity to make a political confession of faith appears not only to have fortified him in his own convictions, but to have inspired him with the idea of elucidating them for the public through the medium of his art. His next three novels, The Bravo (1831), The Heidenmauer (1832) and The Headsman: or the Abbaye of Vigneron (1833), were expressions of Cooper's republican convictions. The Bravo depicted Venice as a place where a ruthless oligarchy lurks behind the mask of the "serene republic." All were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic, though The Bravo was a critical failure in the United States.[1]
In 1833 Cooper returned to America and immediately published A Letter to My Countrymen, in which he gave his own version of the controversy in which he had been engaged and sharply censured his compatriots for their share in it. This attack he followed up with The Monikins (1835) and The American Democrat (1835); with several sets of notes on his travels and experiences in Europe, among which may be remarked his England (1837), in three volumes, and with Homeward Bound and Home as Found (1838), notable as containing a highly idealized portrait of himself.
All these books tended to increase the ill feeling between author and public; the Whig press was virulent and scandalous in its comments, and Cooper plunged into a series of actions for libel. Victorious in all of them, he returned to his old occupation with something of his original vigor and success. A History of the Navy of the United States (1839), supplemented (1846) by a set of Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers, was succeeded by The Pathfinder (1840), the fourth "Leatherstocking" novel; by Mercedes of Castile (1840); The Deerslayer (1841), the last in the series of books about Natty Bumppo; by The Two Admirals and by Wing and Wing (1842); by Wyandotte, The History of a Pocket Handkerchief, and Ned Myers (1843); and by Afloat and Ashore, or the Adventures of Miles Wallingford (1844).
:: Later life
He turned again from pure fiction to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction, and in the two Littlepage Manuscripts (1845—1846) he wrote with a great deal of vigour. His next novel was The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery; and this was succeeded by Oak Openings, The Two Admirals, and Jack Tier (1848), the latter a curious rifacimento of The Red Rover; by The Sea Lions (1849); and finally by The Ways of the Hour (1850), another title with a purpose, and his last completed novel.
Cooper spent the last years of his life in Cooperstown, New York (named for his father). He died of dropsy on September 14, 1851, a day before his 62nd birthday - and a statue was later erected in his honour. His interment was located at its Christ Episcopal Churchyard where his father William Cooper was buried.
Cooper spent the last years of his life in Cooperstown, New York (named for his father). He died of dropsy on September 14, 1851, a day before his 62nd birthday - and a statue was later erected in his honour. His interment was located at its Christ Episcopal Churchyard where his father William Cooper was buried.
