James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – 
September 14, 1851), was a prolific and popular 
American writer of the early 19th century. He is 
particularly remembered as a novelist, who wrote 
numerous sea-stories as well as the historical 
romances known as the Leatherstocking Tales, 
featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Among his most 
famous works is the novel The Last of the Mohicans, 
which many people consider his masterpiece.

His daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813—1894), was 
known as an author and philanthropist.

Early life
Cooper was born at Burlington, New Jersey, on the 
15th of September 1789. Reared in the wild country 
round Otsego Lake, New York, on the yet unsettled 
estates of his father William Cooper, a judge and 
member of Congress, he was sent to school at Albany 
and at New Haven, and entered Yale at fourteen, 
remaining for some time the youngest student on the 
rolls.

Three years afterwards he joined the United States 
Navy; but after making a voyage or two in a merchant 
vessel, to perfect himself in seamanship, and 
obtaining his lieutenancy, he married and resigned 
his commission (1811).


Literary career
He settled in Westchester County, New York, the 
“Neutral Ground” of his earliest American romance, 
and produced anonymously (1820) his first book, 
Precaution, a novel of the fashionable school. This 
was followed (1821) by The Spy, which was very 
successful at the date of issue; The Pioneers (1823), 
the first of the Leatherstocking series; and The 
Pilot (1824), a bold and dashing sea-story. The next 
was Lionel Lincoln (1825), a feeble and unattractive 
work; and this was succeeded in 1826 by the famous 
Last of the Mohicans, a book that is often quoted 
as its author's masterpiece. Quitting America for 
Europe he published at Paris The Prairie (1826), 
the best of his books in nearly all respects, and 
The Red Rover, (1828), by no means his worst.

At this period the unequal and uncertain talent of 
Cooper would seem to have been at its best. These 
excellent novels were, however, succeeded by one 
very inferior, The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829); 
by The Notions of a Travelling Bachelor (1828); 
and by The Waterwitch (1830), one of his many 
sea-stories. In 1830 he entered the lists as a 
party writer, defending in a series of letters 
to the National, a Parisian journal, the United 
States against a string of charges brought against 
them by the Revue Britannique; and 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 of making 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 imposing them on the public 
through the medium of his art. His next three 
novels, The Bravo (1831), The Heidenmaue (1832) 
and The Headsman: or the Abbaye of Vigneron (1833), 
were designed to exalt the people at the expense 
of the aristocracy. All were widely read on both 
sides of the Atlantic.

In 1833 Cooper returned to America, and immediately 
published A Letter to my Countrymen, in which he 
gave his own version of the controversy he had 
been engaged in, and passed some sharp censure on 
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, a burst of vanity and illtemper; 
and with Homeward Bound, and Home as Found (1838), 
noticeable 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 old vigour 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), a good “Leatherstocking” novel; 
by Mercedes of Castile (1840); The Deerslayer (1841); 
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).

From pure fiction, however, he turned again 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 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 novel with a purpose, and his last 
book.


Last years and legacy
Cooper spend the last years of his life in Cooperstown, 
New York (named for his father). He died of dropsy 
on the 14th of September 1851 and a statue was later 
erected in his honor.

Cooper was certainly one of the most popular 19th 
century authors. His stories have been translated 
into nearly all the languages of Europe and into some 
of those of Asia. Balzac admired him greatly, but 
with discrimination; Victor Hugo pronounced him 
greater than the great master of modern romance, 
and this verdict was echoed by a multitude of inferior 
readers, who were satisfied with no title for their 
favourite less than that of “the American Scott.” As 
a satirist and observer he is simply the “Cooper who's 
written six volumes to prove he's as good as a Lord” 
of Lowell's clever portrait; his enormous vanity and 
his irritability find vent in a sort of dull violence, 
which is exceedingly tiresome. He was most memorably 
criticised by Mark Twain whose vicious and amusing 
"The Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper" 
is still read widely in academic circles. It is only 
as a novelist that he deserves consideration. His 
qualities are not those of the great masters of 
fiction; but he had an inexhaustible imagination, 
some faculty for simple combination of incident, a 
homely tragic force which is very genuine and effective, 
and up to a certain point a fine narrative power.

His literary training was inadequate; his vocabulary 
is limited and his style awkward and pretentious; and 
he had a fondness for moralizing tritely and obviously, 
which mars his best passages. In point of conception, 
each of his three-and-thirty novels is either 
absolutely good or is possessed of a certain amount 
of merit; but hitches occur in all, so that every one 
of them is remarkable rather in its episodes than as 
a whole. Nothing can be more vividly told than the 
escape of the Yankee man-of-war through the shoals 
and from the English cruisers in The Pilot, but there 
are few things flatter in the range of fiction than 
the other incidents of the novel.

It is therefore with some show of reason that The Last 
of the Mohicans, which as a chain of brilliantly 
narrated episodes is certainly the least faulty in this 
matter of sustained excellence of execution, should be 
held to be the best of his works.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.


Cooper's writings
1820   Precaution novel 
1821 The Spy novel 
1823 The Pioneers novel (Leatherstocking Tales) 
1823 Tales for Fifteen short stories 
1823 The Pilot novel 
1825 Lionel Lincoln novel 
1826 The Last of the Mohicans novel (Leatherstocking Tales) 
1827 The Prairie novel (Leatherstocking Tales) 
1828 The Red Rover novel 
1828 Notions of the Americans non-fiction 
1829 The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish novel 
1830 The Water-Witch novel 
1831 The Bravo novel 
1832 The Heidenmauer novel 
1832 No Steamboats short story 
1833 The Headsman novel 
1834 A Letter to His Countrymen politics 
1835 The Monikins novel 
1836 Gleanings in Europe: Switzerland travel 
1836 Gleanings in Europe: The Rhine travel 
1837 Gleanings in Europe: France travel 
1837 Gleanings in Europe: England travel 
1838 Gleanings in Europe: Italy travel 
1838 The American Democrat non-fiction 
1838 The Chronicles of Cooperstown history 
1838 The Eclipse autobiography 
1838 Homeward Bound novel 
1838 Home as Found novel 
1839 History of the Navy history 
1840 The Pathfinder novel (Leatherstocking Tales) 
1840 Mercedes of Castile novel 
1841 The Deerslayer novel (Leatherstocking Tales) 
1842 The Two Admirals novel 
1842 The Wing-and-Wing novel 
1843 Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief   novelette 
1843 Wyandotté novel 
1843 Ned Myers biography 
1844 Afloat and Ashore novel 
1844 Miles Wallingford novel 
1845 Satanstoe novel 
1845 The Chainbearer novel 
1846 The Redskins novel 
1846 Lives of Distinguished Naval Officers biography 
1847 The Crater novel 
1848 Jack Tier novel 
1848 The Oak Openings novel 
1849 The Sea Lions novel 
1850 The Ways of the Hour novel 
1850 The Lake Gun short story 
1850 Upside Down play 
1851 The Towns of Manhattan politics 
1851 Old Ironsides history