James Fenimore Cooper

I

Introduction

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), American novelist, travel writer, and social critic, regarded as the first great American writer of fiction. He was famed for his action-packed plots and his vivid, if somewhat idealized, portrayal of American life in the forest and at sea.

Born in Burlington, New Jersey, Cooper grew up in Cooperstown, a central New York State town founded by his father. Much of Cooper's knowledge of the forest and Native Americans was gathered firsthand during his boyhood in a region still very much a wilderness. After being expelled from Yale University in 1805 for his prankish behavior, Cooper served as a sailor in the merchant marine and as a midshipman in the United States Navy. He left naval service in 1811 to marry Susan DeLancey, and for several years managed his wife's income-producing estates in Westchester County, New York.

II

Literary Beginnings

Cooper began his writing career at the age of 30. He wrote his first book, Precaution (1820), primarily to demonstrate to his wife that he could write a better novel than the one he was reading to her at the time. Precaution was a conventional novel of English manners and was not a success. Cooper chose for his second book a subject closer to home, and the result, The Spy (1821), a novel about the American Revolution (1775-1783) in New York State, was successful both in the United States and abroad. In 1823 Cooper wrote The Pioneers, the first of the five novels that make up the Leather-Stocking Tales. The remaining four books—The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841)—continue the story of Natty Bumppo, one of the most famous characters in American fiction. The Leather-Stocking Tales are noted for their portrayal of American subject matter in American settings. The hero of the tales, Natty Bumppo, embodies the conflict between preserving nature unspoiled and developing the land in the name of progress. He is a white frontiersman with ties to the settlers who nevertheless spends much of his time in the wilderness with Native Americans. The positioning of Natty Bumppo between two modes of living appealed to readers and contributed to Cooper's broad appeal, both in the United States and overseas. Cooper's popularity was also established with the publication during the 1820s and 1830s of a number of sea tales, the first of which was The Pilot (1823). During his seven years abroad in Europe from 1826 to 1833, Cooper produced a variety of novels, including The Bravo (1831), The Heidenmauer (1832), and The Headsman (1833), which form a trilogy intended to portray realistically the feudalism of medieval Europe.

III

Later Career

Cooper's first work after returning to the United States was A Letter to His Countrymen (1834), one of the several works of social criticism in which he expressed his conservative attitude toward democracy. The satire The Monikins (1835) and The American Democrat (1838) continue in the same vein. Despite attacks in the press for his snobbery and antidemocratic stance, Cooper's works—including the four volumes of Gleanings in Europe (1837-1838), in which he described his travels abroad—remained popular.

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The remaining years of Cooper's life were spent at Cooperstown. There he continued to write both fiction and nonfiction, including some volumes of naval history and the trilogy known as the Littlepage Manuscripts—Satanstoe (1845), The Chainbearer (1845), and The Redskins (1846)—which tells the story of several generations of a New York State family and defends landed wealth against the new aristocracy based on industry and finance.

Cooper's reputation remains somewhat equivocal. He is widely read in Europe, where his Leather-Stocking Tales contributed to the romantic notion of American frontier life. English novelists such as Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence praised his work; American writers have been of differing opinions. Herman Melville admired Cooper's sea tales; Mark Twain questioned his knowledge of wilderness survival and ridiculed his handling of character and dialogue. Many critics today, however, perceive sympathetically Cooper's fear that unspoiled nature would eventually be destroyed by the encroachments of civilization.