Overview
An early nineteenth century American author best known today for his novel The Last of the Mohicans
Resources
"In one place in "Deerslayer," Twain wrote, "and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record."
- The James Fenimore Cooper Society: A society aimed to promote the appreciation of Cooper's works, including an extensive bibliography of articles about Cooper.
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 novel The Last of the Mohicans, which many consider to be his masterpiece.
Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, and later settled in Scarsdale, Westchester County, New York and anonymously published his first book, Precaution (1820). He soon issued several others: The Spy (1821); The Pioneers (1823), the first of the Leatherstocking series; and The Pilot (1824); Lionel Lincoln (1825) ; Last of the Mohicans (1826), a book that is considered by many to be Cooper's masterpiece. The book was written in a second-story storefront-apartment in Warrensburg, New York, just north of where most of the book's plot takes place. Leaving America for Europe Cooper published in Paris The Prairie (1826) and The Red Rover (1828).
These novels were succeeded by: The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829); by The Notions of a Traveling Bachelor (1828); and by The Waterwitch (1830), one of his many sea-stories. In 1830 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.
This opportunity to make a political confession of faith appears not only to have fortified him in his own convictions, but to have inspired him with the idea of elucidating them for the public through the medium of his art. His next three novels, The Bravo (1831), The Heidenmauer (1832) and The Headsman: or the Abbaye of Vigneron (1833), were expressions of Cooper's republican convictions. 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 The Monikins (1835) and The American Democrat (1835); with several sets of notes on his travels and experiences in Europe, among which may be remarked his England (1837), in three volumes, and with Homeward Bound and Home as Found (1838), notable as containing a highly idealized portrait of himself.
All these books tended to increase the ill feeling between author and public; the Whig press was virulent and scandalous in its comments, and Cooper plunged into a series of actions for libel. Victorious in all of them, he returned to his old occupation with something of his original vigor and success. A History of the Navy of the United States (1839), supplemented (1846) by a set of Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers, was succeeded by The Pathfinder (1840), a good "Leatherstocking" novel; by Mercedes of Castile (1840); The Deerslayer (1841); by The Two Admirals and by Wing and Wing (1842); by Wyandotte, The History of a Pocket Handkerchief, and Ned Myers (1843); and by Afloat and Ashore, or the Adventures of Miles Wallingford (1844).
Later life
He turned again from pure fiction to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction, and in the two Littlepage Manuscripts (1845—1846) he wrote with a great deal of vigour. His next novel was The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery; and this was succeeded by Oak Openings, The Two Admirals, and Jack Tier (1848), the latter a curious rifacimento of The Red Rover; by The Sea Lions (1849); and finally by The Ways of the Hour (1850), another title with a purpose, and his last completed novel.
Cooper spent the last years of his life in Cooperstown, New York (named for his father). He died of dropsy on September 14, 1851, a day before his 62nd birthday - and a statue was later erected in his honour.
Cooper was certainly one of the most popular 19th century American authors. Cooper's work was admired greatly throughout the world. While on his death bed, the Austrian composer Franz Schubert became an avid reader of Cooper's novels. His stories have been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe and into some of those of Asia. Balzac admired him greatly, but with discrimination. Cooper's work has greatly influenced J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Elves have many elements of Cooper's portraits of noble Native Americans, while some passages -- like the journey down the river Anduin in The Two Towers -- read like passages from The Last of the Mohicans.
Though many scholars dispute Cooper being classified as a Romantic (he predates the movement), 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.” As a satirist and observer he is simply the “Cooper who's written six volumes to prove he's as good as a Lord” of Lowell's clever portrait; his enormous vanity and his irritability find vent in a sort of dull violence, which is exceedingly tiresome. He was most memorably criticized by Mark Twain whose vicious and amusing "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences" is still read widely in academic circles.
Cooper was criticized heavily for his depiction of women characters in his work. Contemporary critic James Russell Lowell referred to it poetically: "...the women he draws from one model don't vary, / All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie
The Last of the Mohicans is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper, first published in January 1826.
It was one of the most popular English-language novels of its time, and helped establish Cooper as one of the first world-famous American writers. Its narrative flaws were criticized from the start, and its length and elaborately formal prose style have reduced its appeal to later readers. Regardless, The Last of the Mohicans remains on the syllabi of most American literature courses. This second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy is the best known. The Pathfinder, written 14 years later in 1840, is its sequel.
Cooper named a principal character Uncas after the most famous of the Mohegans. The real Uncas lived in the colony of Connecticut in the mid seventeenth century, and not in the New York frontier a century later. Uncas was a Mohegan, not a Mohican, and Cooper's usage has helped to confuse the names of two tribes to the present day. When John Uncas, his last surviving male descendant died in 1842, the Newark Daily Advertiser wrote "Last of the Mohegans Gone" lamenting the extinction of the tribe. The writer was not aware that Mohegans still existed then and to the present day.
The story takes place in 1757 during the French and Indian War, when France and the Kingdom of Great Britain battled for control of the American and Canadian colonies. During this war, the French often allied themselves with Native American tribes in order to gain an advantage over the British, with unpredictable and often tragic results.
The story is set in the British province of New York during the French and Indian War, and concerns a Huron massacre (with passive French acquiescence) of from 500 to 1,500 unarmed Anglo-American troops, who had honorably surrendered at Fort William Henry, plus some women and servants; the kidnapping of two sisters, daughters of the British commander; and their rescue by Hawkeye, the last two Mohicans, and others. Parts of the story may have been derived from the capture and death of Jane McCrea in July 1777 near Fort Edward, New York, by members of an Algonquian tribe.
The title of the book comes from a quote by Tamanend, "I have lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans
Oberg, Michael Leroy, Uncas, First of the Mohegans, 2003, ISBN 0801438772
