James Fenimore Cooper

Cooper, James Fenimore

(1789–1851) , writer; born in Burlington, N.J. Raised in prosperous circumstances in his father's frontier settlement at Cooperstown, N.Y., he attended Yale University (but was expelled for a prank) and spent several years in the navy (1806–11). Living as a country gentleman, he wrote his first novel, Precaution (1820), allegedly after his wife challenged his claim that he could write a better one than what she was then reading. His second, The Spy (1821), is regarded as the first major American novel. He moved to New York City and achieved great popular success with The Pilot (1823) and his first three Leatherstocking tales, The Pioneers (1823), followed by The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and The Prairie (1827), a series that offered for the first time a heroic vision of the American frontier. From 1826 to 1833 he lived in Europe, where he wrote several American and European romances and other works revealing his deep homesickness for an unspoiled American wilderness. But his return to Cooperstown in 1834 was followed by years of bitter disillusionment with the U.S.A. He wrote many satires and virulent criticism that were largely ignored by readers; he also engaged in libel suits against some of his critics and this only further alienated the American public. The prolific output of his last years included a scholarly history of the U.S. Navy (1839), and, among other novels, two final Leatherstocking tales, The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

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

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.