James Fenimore Cooper was born on September 15, 1789 at Burlington in New Jersey.
He was born in a family of Quakers, to William Cooper and Elizabeth Cooper. William Cooper was a judge and a member of Congress. Cooper grew up in the area around New York, on the estates that were developed by his father.
Cooper’s early years, which he spent in the forested areas influenced his writings. His early education was at the village school and later at New Haven. At the age of 14, Cooper was sent to Yale where he was the youngest student. Upon expulsion from Yale, due to the pranks that he played, Cooper joined the navy.
Cooper was made midshipman in 1808. He served on board the Wasp in the Atlantic, in 1809. He resigned from the navy in 1811, as a Lieutenant and married Susan De Lancy. Cooper lived first at Mamaroneck and then at Cooperstown. Till the year 1821, Cooper led the life of a farmer. However, financial difficulties forced him to relocate to Westchester.
It was at Westchester that Cooper first gave serious thought to trying his hand at writing.
Cooper’s first novel was Precaution, written in 1820. It was modeled after the writing style of Jane Austen. The novel did not meet with great success. In 1821, Cooper’s second novel The Spy was published. It is a tale of Harvey Birch, who spied on the British during the American Revolution.
Cooper was inspired by the writing style of Walter Scott. Like Scott, Cooper’s characters were either good or evil, with no shades of gray in between. Cooper also wrote sea stories, for which he drew from his experiences in the navy. Some of his sea adventures include The Red Rover, Miles Wallingford, and The Sea Lions that were published in 1827, 1844, and 1849.
Cooper is best remembered for his tales of adventures on the frontier. Cooper wrote a series of adventure stories set in the frontiers. The main protagonists of his frontier stories were Natty Bumpoo, a free spirited frontiersman and his Indian friend Chingachgook. They first appeared in The Pioneers in 1823.
Natty Bumpoo, also known as Hawkeye was created as the archetype of an adventurer in the frontier during the pioneering era. Cooper modeled Natty Bumpoo on real life frontiersman Daniel Boone. The Last of the Mohicans and The Deerslayer are two of his most famous novels in this series.
Cooper migrated to Europe in 1826 and till 1833 he lived in different European cities. He tried his hand, unsuccessfully, at writing romances. He was uncomfortable with the literary environment of London; he enjoyed his stay in Italy. While serving as the American consul at Lyons, Cooper met Marquis de Lafayette. His essay Notions of America written in 1828 was a result of the impressions he gathered during his meeting with the Marquis.
During his stay in Europe, Cooper wrote The Waterwitch and The Notions of a Traveling Bachelor. These were published in 1828 and 1830, respectively. He also took up cudgels on behalf of the United States against Revue Britanniqueregarding the charges they had levied against the United States.
Cooper wrote The Bravo in 1831 and The Heidenmaue 1832. Both these novels had political overtones and Cooper’s anti aristocracy sentiments are expressed in this novel. His writings during this period are considered to be marked with a not very charitable outlook of those with whom he disagreed. At the same time, in these writings Cooper presented a not very convincing portrait of himself as a righteous but wronged individual.
His work during this phase includes A Letter to my Countrymen, Homeward Bound and Home as Found
On his return to America in 1833, Cooper stayed at Cooperstown. He continued to write mainly to boost his income. His later works include the trilogy The Littlepage Manuscripts, which dealt with the issues concerning rent between the property owners and their tenants in New York.
Cooper was not very circumspect in giving his opinion, upon his return to the United States; Cooper was embroiled in a series of libel cases against media persons. In fact, even Mark Twain criticized Cooper in his essay Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences written in 1895.
The Last of the Mohicans, is a sequence of events that are beautifully narrated and according to many critics, Cooper was able to sustain a level of excellence throughout this novel, something that he managed only in patches in the majority of his works. The story is of the period during the war between the French and the British. The novel has been adapted for the screen a number of times; the last major adaptation was directed by Michael Mann in 1992. Several television series have adapted elements from its plot.
Cooper mainly wrote fiction, he also wrote informative books mainly on the sea, for example A History of the Navy of the United States, written in 1839. He also attempted writing stories that had an element of the supernatural in them. One such novel was The Crater published in 1847. In 1848, Cooper rewrote The Red Rover, a novel published earlier, asJack Tier. His last book was The Ways of the Hour written in 1850.
Cooper died on September 14, 1851 at Cooperstown in New York. He was suffering from Dropsy. During his lifetime, Cooper’s works were widely read in America, where he was considered America’s answer to Walter Scott. After his death, his works were translated into all the major languages of Europe. Balzac was one of Cooper’s many admirers.
