James Fenimore Cooper, from Wikipedia:
James Fenimore Cooper ( 1789 – 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. His historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a unique form of American literature.
Before embarking on his career as a writer, he served in the U.S. Navy as a midshipman, which greatly influenced many of his novels and other writings. The novel that launched his career was The Spy, a tale about counterespionage set during the Revolutionary War and published in 1821. He also wrote numerous sea stories, and his best-known works are five historical novels of the frontier period known as the Leatherstocking Tales. Among naval historians, Coopers works on the early U.S. Navy have been well received, but they were sometimes criticized by his contemporaries. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece.
In 1820, Coopers wife Susan wagered that he could write a book better than the one that she was reading. In response to the wager, Cooper wrote the novel Precaution . Its focus on morals and manners was influenced by Jane Austens approach to fiction. He anonymously published Precaution and it received favorable notice from the United States and England.
By contrast, his second novel The Spy (1821) was inspired by a tale related to him by neighbor and family friend John Jay. It was more successful and became a bestseller; the setting of this Revolutionary War tale is widely believed to have been John Jays family home "The Locusts" in Rye, New York.
In 1823, Cooper published The Pioneers, the first of the Leatherstocking series. The series features Natty Bumppo, a resourceful American woodsman at home with the Delaware Indians and their chief Chingachgook. Bumppo was also the main character of Coopers most famous novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826), written in New York City where Cooper and his family lived from 1822 to 1826. The book became one of the most widely read American novels of the 19th century.
His historical account of the U.S. Navy was first well received but later harshly criticized in America and abroad. It took Cooper 14 years to research and gather material for the book. His close association with the U.S. Navy and various officers, and his familiarity with naval life at sea provided him the background and connections to research and write this work. Coopers work is said to have stood the test of time and is considered an authoritative account of the U.S. Navy during that time.
On May 10, 1839, he published his History of the U.S. Navy,[39] and returned to the Leatherstocking Tales series with The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841) and other novels. He wrote again on maritime themes, including Ned Myers, or A Life Before the Mast, which is of particular interest to naval historians.
One of his later novels was The Crater, an allegory of the rise and fall of the United States, authored in 1848. His growing sense of historical doom was exemplified in this work. At the end of his career, he wrote a scornful satire about American social life and legal practices called The Ways of the Hour, authored in 1850.
He turned again from pure fiction to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction with the Littlepage Manuscripts (1845–1846). His next novel was The Crater, or Vulcans Peak (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery. Jack Tier (1848) was a remaking of The Red Rover, and The Ways of the Hour was his last completed novel.[48]
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, the Austrian composer Franz Schubert wanted most to read more of Coopers novels. Honoré de Balzac, the French novelist and playwright, admired him greatly.
Henry David Thoreau, while attending Harvard, incorporated some of Coopers style in his own work.[56] Coopers work, particularly The Pioneers and The Pilot, demonstrate an early 19th-century American preoccupation with alternating prudence and negligence in a country where property rights were often still in dispute.
Though some scholars have hesitated to classify Cooper as a strict Romantic, Victor Hugo pronounced him greater than the great master[who?] of modern romance. This verdict was echoed by a multitude of less famous readers, such as Balzac and Rudolf Drescher of Germany, who were satisfied with no title for their favorite less than that of the "American Scott."
