| James Fenimore
Cooper |
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| Nationality - American |
Profession - Author |
| Date of birth - 15 Sep 1789
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Date of death - 1851 |
| Place of birth
- Burlington : New Jersey |
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James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey on September 15, 1789 and was a prolific American writer of the early 19th century - best known for his tales of frontier adventure, among them The Last of the Mohicans (1826), an adventure story set in the Lake Champlain.
He was educated in the village school at Cooperstown, and in 1800-02 in the household of the rector of St. Peter's.
His father, Judge William Cooper, was a representantive of the 4th and 6th Congress, and had attained wealth by developing virgin land.
In his junior year Cooper was expelled from Yale because of a series of pranks, which included training a donkey to sit in a professor's chair.
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Encouraged by his father, Cooper joined the Navy and served on the Sterling, 1806-07. On his return to the United States, he received a warrant as a midshipman. In 1808 he served on the Vesuvius and on the Wasp in the Atlantic in 1809.
Upon his father's death in 1809, Cooper became financially independent. He resigned comission in 1811 and married Susan Augusta De Lancey, who was a descendend from the early governors of New York colony.
From the early 1810s Cooper took up the comfortable life of a gentleman farmer. He lived in Mamaroneck, New York from 1811 to 1814, then in Cooperstown, and from 1817 to 1821 in Scarsdale, New York.
Cooper's first novel Precaution (1820) was an imitation of Jane Austen's novels and a failure. His second, The Spy (1821), was based on Sir Walter Scott's Waverly series, and told an adventure tale about the American Revolution. It brought him fame and wealth and Cooper gave up farming to continue writing.
In 1823 appeared The Pioneers, and started his 'Leatherstocking series'. They depicted the adventures of Natty Bumppo, also called Leatherstocking or Hawkeye, and his Indian companion Chingachgook. The novels were not written in the chronological order. They included such classics as The Deerslayer (1841), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Prairie (1827).
From 1826 to 1833 Cooper lived in Europe, where he wrote romances and unsuccesfully books about democracy, politics, and society.
In 1833 Cooper returned to the Unites States, living first in New York City and then in Cooperstown. Feeling treated ill by journalist, he fought against press with libel suits, winning most of his cases. However, especially his carelessness was open to such critic as presented by Mark Twain in his essay Fenomore Cooper's Literary Offenses (1895).
During the last decade of his life Cooper was earning less from his books but was forced to go on writing for income.
James Fenimore Cooper died at Otsego Hall, Cooperstown, New York of liver failure on September 14, 1851.
SOURCE: Classic Reader |
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James Fenimore Cooper
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listed |
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