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He wrote a number of social, political, and historical fiction and non-fiction novels. His daughter Susan Fennimore Cooper was also an author who wrote for women's suffrage. Her only novel was Elinor Wylkys.
The most famous works of James Cooper include The Spy, an espionage tale set in the American Revolutionary War period, and historical novel series of the frontier period known as the Leatherstocking Tales. Leatherstocking Tales introduced the very popular and appreciated American frontier scout icon character Natty Bumppo, a Romantic character who got immense success with the novel The Last of the Mohicans.
Cooper was equally admired and criticized by the bigwigs of the literary world. Henry David Thoreau was inspired by Cooper’s individualistic theme and ideas of writings. D.H Lawrence believed Cooper’s work is lovely, mature, and sensitive art. Cooper was the first American Novelist who introduced African, African-American & Native American characters in his books.
Victor Hugo termed Cooper as the “greatest novelist of the century outside France.”
Mark Twain, who was a staunch realist and somehow always criticized romanticism, criticized Cooper’s novels too in his essay “Fernimore Cooper’s Literary Offences.”
James Cooper joined the Navy in 1809 and he got married in 1811. Chance led him to experiment with fiction which became the line of work in which he was to achieve immense fame.
His first work was Precaution, published in the year 1820. It was more like an imitation of contemporary domestic novels like those of Amelia Opied or Jane Austin and it didn’t gain much success.
He was reading a novel to his wife and at some time, he got irritated and claimed that he can write a better novel. So his wife challenged him to write a novel for her. And that was the beginning of his great career as an author who became one of the most read romantic American writers. He published Precaution anonymously.
2) The Spy; A Tale of the Neutral Ground. It was published in the year 1821. It was his first successful novel. The story is based on American Revolutionary War and tells the story of a peddler named Harvey Birch who is suspected of being a spy of the British crown. However, in the end, it is revealed that he, not a spy but a patriot.
Cooper’s most famous works were the series the Leatherstocking Tales. It was a series of five novels. The storyline of each of these five novels is set in the 18th century. Each of the novels features Natty Bumppo, an American Frontier Scout whom the European-American settlers recognized as ‘Leatherstocking, ‘the trapper’, and ‘the pathfinder’. Native Americans recognized Natty Bumppo as ‘Deerslayer’, La Longe Carbine’, and ‘Hawkeye.’
The Leatherstocking series was published from 1827-1841. These were romantic novels and Natty Bumppo was a character representing ideals of Individualism with very high morals.
Natty Bumppo is the child of white parents who was raised by Native Americans of the Delaware Tribe and he was educated by Moravian Christians. As an adult, he becomes a fearless warrior who can use many weapons and his favorite weapon is the long rifle. His foster brother is Chingachgook and his nephew is Uncas who are native Indians.
So Natty Bumppo is a mixture of various cultures, he represents a brave honest, larger-than-life character, and hence Natty Bumppo became the model for idealistic American folk hero. He is known as the romancer of the forest, prairie, and the sea.
Such stories as The Pilot, The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneer, and The Prairie dealing as they do for the most part with the clash of the new civilization with primitive Young America, have no peers in the romantic fiction.
The five novels of the Leatherstocking series were
1) The Pioneers: It was the first of the Leatherstocking series. It was published in the year 1823. The subtitle of The Pioneers is “The Sources of the Susquehanna: A Descriptive Tale. It is a historical novel set in 1793.
2) The Last of the Mohicans: it was published in the year 1826 and its subtitle is ‘A Narrative of 1757.” It depicts the was between French forces and the Native Americans with British characters involved. It is set in 1757.
3) The Prairie: It was published in 1827 and the subtitle of The Prairie is ‘A Tale.’ It was set in 1804, that is, the storyline is based on real events of the time during 1804.
4) The Pathfinder: It was published in the year 1827 and the subtitle of this novel was The Inland Sea. Its storyline is based on the historical events during 1758-1759.
5) The Deerslayer: The subtitle is The First Warpath. It was published in the year 1841 and it is set in 1740-1755.
So this is all about James Fenimore Cooper. He inspired other Romanticists including Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. We will continue to discuss other literary gems of America in the upcoming editions. Please stay connected to the Discourse.
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