Cooper

James Fenimore (September 15, 1789-September 14, 1851), the author of the Leatherstocking Tales. The Coopers were a Quaker family from Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace. Father Cooper was a New Jersey judge. He was a man of culture, wealth, and energy. He sat in Congress and was a leading Federalist. Mrs. Cooper was of Swedish descent. James Fenimore was born at Burlington, New Jersey, the youngest but one of twelve children. When he was a year old the family moved to what was then the western frontier of New York, and founded the village of Cooperstown on Otsego Lake. Here they lived for six years in a log house. Judge Cooper secured a large tract of land, and in time built what was known as the "Hall." The old home is described in The Pioneers as Templeton. James came into contact with the Indians, and saw much of primeval life in the forests and on the rivers and lakes of that beautiful region. He was fitted for college at Albany, and was sent to Yale at the age of thirteen. Ere graduation day he was dismissed in disgrace for engaging in college pranks. He then went to sea, and served as a midshipman and lieutenant. In 1811 he married a Miss De Lancey, sister of the Bishop of Western New York. Her family were Tories. Young Cooper left the navy, thus taking no part in the War of 1812. For ten years he followed the profession of a gentleman farmer.

Through reading English novels he became fired with the ambition to write. His first production was Precaution, an English society novel. It was received with some favor in England, but not at home. In 1821 he published The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground. Inasmuch as no publisher was willing to risk an American novel, Cooper published it at his own expense. The Spy made Cooper famous on both sides of the Atlantic. It was translated into all the modern languages of Europe, and even into Arabic, Russian, and Persian. For ten years he wrote rapidly. From 1826 to 1833 he resided abroad at Paris, Berne, Florence, Naples, and Rome. Among his acquaintances were Sir Walter Scott and the Marquis Lafayette. Returning to New York he got into legal controversy with his neighbors relative to the use of picnic grounds which his father had granted to the public on certain conditions not complied with. Cooper's life was embittered by local feuds. At death he enjoined his family to furnish no material for a biography.

Cooper rests in the churchyard of Christ Church by the side of his wife. A monument in Lakeside Cemetery near by was erected in his honor. It consists of a column surmounted by a figure of Leatherstocking. Cooperstown is now given quite over to his memory. The steamers on Otsego Lake are named for characters in the Leatherstocking Tales. Otsego Rock is noted as the traditional meeting place of Indians. Leatherstocking Falls and Leatherstocking Cave are pointed out to tourists as places of literary interest.

Cooper's experience in the navy furnished him the material for The Red Rover and other sea tales. His fame rests, however, on The Spy and the Leatherstocking Tales. The latter should be read in the following order: The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pioneers, and The Prairie. Mark Twain and other critics have been pleased to make merry over absurdities, contradictory statements, and marvelous extrications from impossible situations. Indeed, there is abundant opportunity for such remarks, but Cooper is none the less first Of American storytellers. He wrote at the same time Walter Scott was writing, and almost as rapidly. The Leatherstocking Tales are in their way as original, as distinct, and as great an achievement as the Waverley Novels. As characters of the rifle, the forest, and the canoe, Hawkeye and Uncas are not surpassed.

There was a brilliant story-teller in Cooper, but there was also a prosy moralist and reformer; and when circumstances called the latter to the front, it went hard with the story-teller.-Bronson.

To the French and the Germans, to the Italians and the Spaniards, James Fenimore Cooper is as well known as Walter Scott. Irving was the first American writer of short stories, but Cooper was the first American novelist; and, to the present day, he is the one American novelist whose fame is solidly established among foreigners.-Brander Matthews.

Probably the best service a friend can do a friend is to point out his faults to him; and there is nothing for which America owes more gratitude to Cooper than for his faithfulness in this respect.-Noble.

It must not be forgotten that the literary world is Cooper's debtor for a new sensation. Leatherstocking and Long Tom Coffin are his invention. They may seem artificial now, but they were vivid characters once, and the most superior of us read their stories with breathless interest.-Shaw.

He has drawn you one character, though, that is new,

One wild flower he's plucked that is wet with the dew

Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing not to mince,