Description

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century whose historical romances depicting frontier and Native American life from the 17th-19th centuries created a unique form of American literature. He lived for much of his boyhood, and the last 15 years of his life, in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father. He was enrolled at Yale University aged 13 but, following a series of pranks, was expelled in his third year without completing his degree. In 1806 he found work as a sailor and at 17 joined the crew of a merchant vessel. By 1811 he had obtained the rank of midshipman in the fledgling US Navy, having married in January that year at 21. The Coopers had seven children, five of whom survived to adulthood. Having decided to try his hand at writing fiction, in 1820 he published his first novel, Precaution, anonymously. Whilst this first work was a tale of morals and manners, his second, The Spy (1821), was an action adventure centring on spying and skirmishing between US and British forces. It became the first bestseller at home and abroad to be written by an American, requiring several reprintings to satisfy demand. This success spurred him on to write The Pioneers (1823), the first of his Leatherstocking series featuring an inter-racial friendship between Natty Bumppo, a resourceful American woodsman, and Chief Chingachgook of the Delaware Indians. Bumppo was also the hero of Cooper's most famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans (1826). Throughout his career Cooper published numerous social, political, and historical works of fiction and non-fiction with the objective of countering European prejudices and nurturing an original American art and culture, and he became one of the most popular 19th-century American authors, his work greatly admired worldwide. The Deerslayer, or The First War-Path (1841) was the last of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, although its 1740-45 time period makes it the first instalment chronologically and in the lifetime of hero, Natty Bumppo, so it is therefore considered to be the prequel to the rest of the series. Its setting on Otsego Lake in central upstate New York is the same as that of The Pioneers and it introduces Bumppo as 'Deerslayer', recounting his early adventures involving European Americans, the Hurons, and Delaware Indians. D H Lawrence described it as "one of the most beautiful and perfect books in the world: flawless as a jewel and of gem-like concentration."