James Fenimore Cooper

Cooper, James Fenimore 

Born Sept. 15, 1789, in Burlington, N.J.; died Sept. 14, 1851, in Cooperstown. American writer.

Cooper studied at Yale University and served in the navy (1806–11). He won world renown with his cycle of five novels, written around a central character, Natty (Nathaniel) Bumppo, who appears under various names: Deerslayer, Pathfinder, Hawkeye, Leatherstocking, and La Longue Carabine. The novels are The Pioneers (1823; Russian translation, 1832), The Last of the Mohicans (1826; Russian translation, 1833), The Prairie (1827; Russian translation, 1829), The Pathfinder, Or The Inland Sea (1840; Russian translation, 1841), and The Deerslayer, Or The First War Path (1841; Russian translation, 1848). Cooper’s seafaring novels are also of great interest, including The Pilot (1823) and The Red Rover (1828).

After his initial eulogizing of the “American freedoms,” Cooper turned to harsh criticism of American reality in the second half of the 1830’s with such works as the social and political satire The Monikins (1835; Russian translation, 1953). The antibourgeois utopian novel The Crater (1847) expressed Cooper’s pessimism.

While tied in many ways to the literature of the 18th-century Enlightenment, Cooper’s works belong to the early period of American romanticism. By vividly depicting the social and racial conflicts of the USA, Cooper introduced new ethnographical motifs that revealed the life and customs of the American aborigines. He also reflected the typically romantic antagonism between nature and civilization in a specifically American context.

The Cooper heritage has become part of the golden treasury of juvenile literature.

WORKS

The Works, vols. 1–33. New York, 1895–1900.
In Russian translation:
Soch., vols. 1–25. St. Petersburg, 1865–80.
Izbr. soch., vols. 1–6. Foreword by A. A. Elistratova. Moscow, 1961–63.

REFERENCES

Istoriia amerikanskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1947.
Bobrova, M. Dzh. F. Kuper. Saratov, 1967.
Spiller, R. E., and P. C. Blackburn. A Descriptive Bibliography of the Writings of James Fenimore Cooper. New York, 1934.
Walker, W. S. James Fenimore Cooper. An Introduction and Interpretation. New York, 1962. (Bibliography, pp. 127–33).
House, K. S. Cooper’s Americans. Columbus, Ohio [1965].
Dekker, G. James Fenimore Cooper the Novelist. London, 1967.

A. N. NIKOLIUKIN