James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century, whose historical romances depicting colonial and indigenous characters from the 17th to the 19th centuries brought him fame and fortune. He lived much of his boyhood and his last 15 years in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father William Cooper on property that he owned. Cooper became a member of the Episcopal Church shortly before his death, and contributed generously to it. He attended Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the Linonian Society.
After a stint on a commercial voyage, Cooper served in the U.S. Navy as a midshipman, where he learned the technology of managing sailing vessels, which greatly influenced many of his novels and other writings. The novel that launched his career was The Spy, a tale about espionage set during the American Revolutionary War and published in 1821. He also created American sea stories. His best-known works are five historical novels of the frontier period, written between 1823 and 1841, known as the Leatherstocking Tales, which introduced the iconic American frontier scout, Natty Bumppo. Cooper's works on the U.S. Navy have been well received among naval historians, but they were sometimes criticized by his contemporaries. Among his more famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece. Throughout his career, he published numerous social, political, and historical works of fiction and nonfiction, with the objective of countering European prejudices and nurturing an original American art and culture.
Early life and education
Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, in 1789 to William Cooper and Elizabeth Cooper, the 11th of 12 children, half of whom died during infancy or childhood.Shortly after James' first birthday, his family moved to Cooperstown, New York, a community founded by his father on a large piece of land that he had bought for development. Later, his father was elected to the United States Congress as a representative from Otsego County. Their town was in a central area of New York along the headwaters of the Susquehanna River that had previously been patented to Colonel George Croghan by the Province of New York in 1769. Croghan mortgaged the land before the revolution, and after the war, part of the tract was sold at public auction to William Cooper and his business partner Andrew Craig. By 1788, William Cooper had selected and surveyed the site where Cooperstown would be established. He erected a home on the shore of Otsego Lake and moved his family there in the autumn of 1790. Several years later, he began construction of the mansion that became known as Otsego Hall, completed in 1799 when James was 10.
Cooper was enrolled at Yale University at age 13, but he incited a dangerous prank, which involved blowing up another student's door—after having already locked a donkey in a recitation room. He was expelled in his third year without completing his degree, so he obtained work in 1806 as a sailor and joined the crew of a merchant vessel at age 17. By 1811, he obtained the rank of midshipman in the fledgling United States Navy, conferred upon him by an officer's warrant signed by Thomas Jefferson.
William Cooper had died more than a year before, in 1809, when James was 20. All five of his sons inherited a supposedly large fortune in money, securities, and land titles, which soon proved to be a proliferation of endless litigation. James married Susan Augusta de Lancey at Mamaroneck, Westchester County, New York, on January 1, 1811, at age 21. She was from a wealthy family, who remained loyal to Great Britain during the revolution. The Coopers had seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood. Their daughter Susan Fenimore Cooper was a writer on nature, female suffrage, and other topics. Her father edited her works and secured publishers for them. One son, Paul Fenimore Cooper, became a lawyer.
Service in the Navy
In 1806 at the age of 17, Cooper joined the crew of the American merchant ship Sterling as a common sailor. At the time, Sterling was captained by young Mainer John Johnston. His first voyage onboard Sterling took him to the English port of Cowes in the Isle of Wight after 40 stormy days. There, the crew acquired information on which British port was best at which to sell their cargo of flour. While anchored off Cowes, Sterling was approached by a Royal Navy warship, which sent a boarding party to the merchant ship. The boarding party proceeded to impress a suspected deserter from the Royal Navy before departing.Their next voyage took them to the Mediterranean along the coast of Spain, including Águilas and Cabo de Gata, where they picked up cargo to be taken to London and unloaded. Their stay in Spain lasted several weeks and impressed the young sailor, the accounts of which Cooper later referred to in his Mercedes of Castile, a novel about Columbus.
After serving aboard the Sterling for 11 months, he joined the United States Navy on January 1, 1808, when he received his commission as a midshipman. Cooper had conducted himself well as a sailor, and his father, a former U.S. congressman, easily secured a commission for him through his long-standing connections with politicians and naval officials. The warrant for Cooper's commission as midshipman was signed by President Jefferson and mailed by Naval Secretary Robert Smith, reaching Cooper on February 19. On February 24, he received orders to report to the naval commander at New York City. Joining the United States Navy fulfilled an aspiration he had had since his youth.
Cooper's first naval assignment came on March 21, 1808, aboard the, an 82-foot bomb ketch that carried 12 guns and a 13-inch mortar. For his next assignment, he served under Lieutenant Melancthon Taylor Woolsey near Oswego on Lake Ontario, overseeing the building of the brig for service on the lake. The vessel was intended for use in a potential war with Great Britain. The vessel was completed, armed with 16 guns, and launched in Lake Ontario in the spring of 1809. In this service, Cooper learned shipbuilding, shipyard duties, and frontier life. During his leisure time, Cooper ventured through the forests of New York and explored the shores of Lake Ontario. He occasionally ventured into the Thousand Islands. His experiences in the Oswego area later inspired some of his work, including his novel The Pathfinder.
After completion of the Oneida in 1809, Cooper accompanied Woolsey to Niagara Falls, who then was ordered to Lake Champlain to serve aboard a gunboat until the winter, when the lake froze over. Cooper himself returned from Oswego to Cooperstown and then New York City. On November 13 of the same year, he was assigned to the under the command of Captain James Lawrence, who was from Burlington and became a personal friend of Cooper's. Aboard this ship, he met his lifelong friend William Branford Shubrick, who was also a midshipman at the time. Cooper later dedicated The Pilot, The Red Rover, and other writings to Shubrick. Assigned to humdrum recruiting tasks rather than exciting voyages, Cooper resigned his commission from the navy in spring 1810; in the same time, he met, wooed, and became engaged to Susan Augusta de Lancey, whom he married on January 1, 1811.
Writings
First endeavors
In 1820, when reading a contemporary novel to his wife Susan, he decided to try his hand at fiction, resulting in a neophyte novel set in England he called Precaution. Its focus on morals and manners was influenced by Jane Austen's approach to fiction. Precaution was published anonymously and received modestly favorable notice in the United States and England. By contrast, his second novel The Spy was inspired by an American tale related to him by neighbor and family friend John Jay. It became the first novel written by an American to become a bestseller at home and abroad, requiring several reprintings to satisfy demand. Set in the "Neutral Ground" between British and American forces and their guerrilla allies in Westchester County, New York, the action centers on spying and skirmishing taking place in and around what is widely believed to be John Jay's family home The Locusts in Rye, New York, of which a portion still exists today as the historic Jay Estate.Following on a swell of popularity, Cooper published The Pioneers, the first of the Leatherstocking series in 1823. The series features the interracial friendship of Natty Bumppo, a resourceful American woodsman who is at home with the Delaware Indians, and their chief, Chingachgook. Bumppo was also the main character of Cooper's most famous novel The Last of the Mohicans, written in New York City, where Cooper and his family lived from 1822 to 1826. The book became one of the more widely read American novels of the 19th century. At this time, Cooper had been living in New York City on Beach Street in what is now downtown's Tribeca.
In 1823, he became a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. In August of that same year, his first son died. He organized the influential Bread and Cheese Club that brought together American writers, editors, artists, scholars, educators, art patrons, merchants, lawyers, politicians, and others.
In 1824, General Lafayette arrived from France aboard the Cadmus at Castle Garden in New York City as the nation's guest. Cooper witnessed his arrival and was one of the active committees of welcome and entertainment.
Europe
In 1826, Cooper moved his family to Europe, where he sought to gain more income from his books, provide better education for his children, improve his health, and observe European manners and politics firsthand. While overseas, he continued to write. His books published in Paris include The Prairie, the third Leatherstocking Tale in which Natty Bumppo dies in the western land newly acquired by Jefferson as the Louisiana Purchase. There, he also published The Red Rover and The Water Witch, two of his many sea stories. During his time in Paris, the Cooper family became active in the small American expatriate community. He became friends with painter Samuel Morse and with French general and American Revolutionary War hero Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. Cooper admired the patrician liberalism of Lafayette, who sought to recruit him to his causes, and eulogized him as a man who "dedicated youth, person, and fortune, to the principles of liberty."In Europe, Cooper's hostility to the perceived corruption of European aristocracy grew as he witnessed the effect they had on the politics of the United Kingdom and France, in particular, what Cooper considered to be the power they held in national legislature and judiciaries to the exclusion of other classes. In 1832, he entered the lists as a political writer in a series of letters to Le National, a Parisian journal. He defended the United States against a string of charges brought by the Revue Britannique. For the rest of his life, he continued skirmishing in print, sometimes for the national interest, sometimes for that of the individual, and frequently for both at once.
This opportunity to make a political confession of faith reflected the political turn that he already had taken in his fiction, having attacked European antirepublicanism in The Bravo. Cooper continued this political course in The Heidenmauer and The Headsman: The Abbaye des Vignerons. The Bravo depicted Venice as a place where a ruthless oligarchy lurks behind the mask of the "serene republic". All were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic, though some Americans accused Cooper of apparently abandoning American life for European—not realizing that the political subterfuges in the European novels were cautions directed at his American audiences. Thus, The Bravo was roughly treated by some critics in the United States.