From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 –
September 14, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century.
He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the
historical
novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales,
featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Among his most famous works
is the Romantic
novel The Last of the Mohicans,
often regarded as his masterpiece.
Life and
work
Early
life
Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, the son
of William and Elizabeth (Fenimore)
Cooper. His father was a United States Congressman.
Shortly after his first birthday, his family moved to Cooperstown, New York, a provence founded by his
father.
At 13, Cooper was enrolled at Yale, but he did not obtain a degree.
He obtained work as a sailor on a merchant vessel, and at 18, Cooper
joined the United States Navy. He obtained the rank of midshipman before leaving
in 1811.
At age 21, he married Susan DeLancey. They had seven children,
five of whom lived to adulthood. The writer Paul
Fenimore Cooper was a great-grandson.
Writings
He anonymously published his first book, Precaution (1820). He soon
issued several others. In 1823, he published The
Pioneers; this was the first of the Leatherstocking series,
featuring Natty Bumppo, the resourceful American woodsman at home
with the Delaware Indians and especially their chief
Chingachgook. Cooper's most famous novel, Last of the Mohicans (1826), became
one of the most widely read American novels of the nineteenth
century. The book was written in New York City, where Cooper and
his family lived from 1822 to 1826.
In 1826 Cooper moved his family to Europe, where he sought to gain more income from
his books as well as provide better education for his children.
While overseas he continued to write. His books published in Paris include The Red
Rover, and The Water Witch—two of his many sea
stories.
In 1832 he entered the lists as a party writer; in a series of
letters to the National, a Parisian journal, he defended
the United
States against a string of charges brought against them 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 not infrequently for both
at once.
Otsego Hall, Cooper's ancestral home
This opportunity to make a political confession of faith
reflected the political turn he already had taken in his fiction,
having attacked European anti-republicanism in The Bravo
(1831). Cooper continued this political course in The
Heidenmauer (1832) and The Headsman: or the Abbaye of
Vigneron (1833). 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 The Bravo was a
critical failure in the United States.[1]
In 1833 Cooper returned to America and immediately published
A Letter to My Countrymen, in which he gave his own
version of the controversy in which he had been engaged and sharply
censured his compatriots for their share in it. This attack he
followed up with novels and several sets of notes on his travels
and experiences in Europe. His
Homeward Bound and Home as Found are notable for
containing a highly idealized portrait of himself.
In June 1834, he resolved to reopen his ancestral mansion, Otsego Hall, at
Cooperstown, then long closed and falling into decay; he had been
absent from the mansion nearly 16 years. Repairs were at once
begun, and the house was speedily put in order. At first, he
wintered in New York City and summered in Cooperstown, but
eventually he made Otsego Hall his permanent abode.[2]
Reaction
All these books touching upon the topics of politics and of Cooper himself tended to
increase the ill feeling between author and public. The Whig press was particularly virulent in its
comments, and Cooper plunged into a series of actions for libel. He
emerged victorious in all his lawsuits.
After concluding his last case in court, Cooper returned to
writing with more energy and success than he had had for several
years. He wrote a history of the US Navy, and then returned to the
Leatherstocking series with The Pathfinder, or The
Inland Sea (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841) and other
novels. He then returned to writing on maritime themes, including
Ned Myers, or A Life Before the Mast, which is of
particular interest to naval historians.
Later
life
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 Vulcan's Peak (1847), in which he attempted
to introduce supernatural machinery. Jack Tier
(1848) was a rifacimento of The Red Rover, and The
Ways of the Hour was his last completed novel.
James Fenimore Cooper became a believer in spiritualism, he was
an attender at spirit circles. [2]
Cooper spent the last years of his life back in Cooperstown. He
died of dropsy on September 14,
1851, the day before his 62nd birthday. His interment was located
at its Christ Episcopal Churchyard, where his father William Cooper was buried.
Several well-known writers, politicians, and other public figures
honored Cooper's memory with a dinner in February 1852; Washington
Irving served as a co-chairman for the event alongside William
Cullen Bryant and Daniel Webster.[3]
Legacy and
criticism
Statue in Cooperstown, New York.
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 Cooper's novels[4]. Honoré de
Balzac, the French novelist and playwright, admired him
greatly. Cooper's stories have been translated into nearly all the
languages of Europe and into some of those of Asia.
Though some scholars may dispute Cooper being classified as a
Romantic, Victor
Hugo pronounced him greater than the great master of modern
romance, and this verdict was echoed by a multitude of less famous
readers, who were satisfied with no title for their favorite less
than that of the "American Scott.” He was most memorably criticized
by Mark Twain whose
vicious and amusing review [5] is
still read widely in academic circles. His reputation today rests
upon the five Leatherstocking tales and some of the maritime
stories. His presentation of race relations and native Americans
has generated much comment, not all of it sympathetic.
Cooper was also criticized heavily for his depiction of women
characters in his work. James Russell Lowell, Cooper's
contemporary and a critic, referred to it poetically in A Fable for
Critics, writing, ". . . the women he draws from one model
don't vary / All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie."[6]
Three dining halls at the State University of
New York at Oswego are named in Cooper's remembrance (Cooper
Hall, The Pathfinder, and Littlepage) because of his temporary
residence in Oswego and for setting some of his works there.[7]
References
- ^
[1]
- ^
Charles
Ledyard Norton (1900). "
Cooper, James Fenimore". Appletons'
Cyclopædia of American Biography.
- ^
Jones, Brian Jay. Washington Irving: An American Original.
New York: Arcade Publishing, 2008: 391. ISBN 978-1-55970836-4
- ^
Letter from Schubert to Franz von Schober, November 12, 1828
- ^
http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/projects/rissetto/offense.html
"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences"
- ^
Porte, Joel. The Romance in America: Studies in Cooper, Poe,
Hawthorne, Melville, and James. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan
University Press, 1969: 20.
- ^
http://www.oswego.edu/library/resources/buildings.html
External
links
Sources
Other
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Cooper, James Fenimore |
| ALTERNATIVE
NAMES |
|
| SHORT
DESCRIPTION |
American novelist |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
September 15, 1789 |
| PLACE OF
BIRTH |
Burlington, New Jersey |
| DATE OF DEATH |
September 14, 1851 |
| PLACE OF
DEATH |
Cooperstown, New York |
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