biography
| name: |
Cooper, James Fenimore
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1789–1851)
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| biography:
| Writer, born in Burlington, New Jersey, USA. Raised in prosperous circumstances in his father's frontier settlement at Cooperstown, New York, 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 she was then reading. His second book, 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. In 1826–33 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 (1834) was followed by years of bitter disillusionment with the USA. He wrote satires and much virulent criticism that were largely ignored by readers, and also engaged in libel suits against some of his critics, which only served to further alienate the American public. The prolific output of his last years included a scholarly history of the US Navy (1839) and, among other novels, two final Leatherstocking tales, The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841). |
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