James Fenimore Cooper

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James Fenimore Cooper’s Writings Background Novelist and social critic James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was the first major American writer to deal imaginatively with American life, mainly in his five "Leather-Stocking Tales." He was also a critic of the political, social, and religious troubles of the day. James Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, on September 15, 1789. He was the eleventh of twelve children. In 1811, he married Susan Augusta DeLancey of a wealthy New York family and established himself in Westchester County overlooking Long Island Sound. He was a farmer involved in the local militia, Agricultural Society, and Episcopal Church. It was here, when he was thirty years old, that he published his first novel. It was written as a sort of dare from his wife. First Period of His Literary Career His first writing, Precaution, was an effort to outshine the English domestic novels he had been reading, which he mimicked in choice of theme, scene, and manner. He soon became conscious that this was a mistake, and the next year, in The Spy, he deliberately tried to repair it by choosing the American Revolution for subject, the rural area around New York City for scene, and the romance of Scott for model. Thereafter, although many of his novels shared similarities with the historical romance, as well as with other popular fictional forms, he never again separated from his concern for American facts and opinions, even though for some of his tales he chose, in the spirit of relative analysis, scenes in foreign lands and waters. All of the novels from the first stage of Cooper's literary career were as experimental as the first two. Three dealt with the frontier and Native American life (The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Prairie), three with the sea (The Pilot, The Red Rover, and The Water Witch), and three with American history (The Spy,

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