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, often regarded as his masterpiece.

Early life• Cooper was

born in Burlington, New Jersey, the son of William and Elizabeth (Fenimore) Cooper. His father was a United States Congressman.

• At 18, Cooper joined the United States Navy. He obtained the rank of midshipman before leaving in 1811.

• At age 21, he married Susan DeLancey. They had seven children. The writer Paul Fenimore Cooper was a great-grandson.

Writings• He anonymously

published his first book, Precaution (1820).

• He soon published several others. In 1823, he published The Pioneers; this was the first of the Leatherstocking series.

• Cooper's most famous novel, Last of the Mohicans (1826), became one of the most widely read American novels of the nineteenth century. The book was written in New York City.

• His books published in Paris include , and The Water Witch—two of his many sea stories.

• In 1832 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 fighting 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 reflected the political turn he already had taken in his fiction, having attacked European anti-republicanism in The Bravo (1831).

• Cooper continued this political course in The Heidenmauer (1832) and The Headsman: or the Abbaye of Vigneron (1833).

• The Bravo represented 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.

• 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.

• His Homeward Bound and Home as Found are notable for containing a highly idealized portrait of himself.

• His next novel was The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery.

• Jack Tier (1848), and The Ways of the Hour was his last completed novel.

Later life…• Cooper spent the last

years of his life in Cooperstown, New York (named for his father). He died of dropsy on September 14, 1851, the day before his 62nd birthday. His interment was located at its Christ Episcopal Churchyard, where his father William Cooper was buried.

Legacy and criticism • Cooper was one of the

most popular 19th century American authors, and his work was admired greatly throughout the world. While on his death bed.

• Cooper's stories have been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe and into some of those of Asia.

The Last of the The Last of the Mohicans. Mohicans.

• The story is set in the British province of New York during the French and Indian War, and concerns—in part—a Huron massacre (with passive French acquiescence) of between 500 to 1,500 Anglo-American troops, who had honorably surrendered at Fort William Henry, plus some women and servants; the kidnapping of two sisters, daughters of the British commander; and their rescue by the last two Mohicans, and others.

• Parts of the story may have been derived from the capture and death of Jane McCrea in July 1777 near Fort Edward, New York, by members of an Algonquian tribe.

• The title of the book comes from a quote by : "I have lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans".