James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey He was the eleventh of twelve children born to William and Elizabeth Cooper. When James was one year old the family moved to the frontier, and his father established the settlement of Cooperstown at the head of the Susquehanna River.Cooper attended a private preparatory school in Albany, New York,and was then admitted to Yale in 1803. He was expelled during his junioryear because of a prank. His family allowed him to join the navy as amidshipman, but he soon found that more discipline was present in the Navythan at Yale. In 1810 Cooper took a furlough, and never returned to activeduty.Cooper married Susan De Lancy in 1811, and for the next ten years heled the life of a country gentleman. However, after the death of all five of hiselder brothers he became responsible for supporting their widows and payingtheir debts. Added to this was the fact that his fathers estate had not beenworth as much as originally thought.In 1820 Cooper published his first fiction, Precaution, on a challengefrom his wife and it was not successful. Then in 1821 he published hissecond novel book, The Spy which had brought international fame and acertain amount of wealth to Cooper.Coopers third book, The Pioneers, was the first of five novels thatmade up the Leatherstocking Tales. These were immensely popular frontiernovels featuring a frontiersman by the name of Natty Bumpo, or Hawkeye. The Pioneers is generally considered to be the first truly Americannovel. The five novels of the series were not written in their narrative order,and were produced over a period of eighteen years.Cooper and his wife had five children, and they lived in Europe from1826 until 1833 for the education of their children. When Cooper returned toAmerica in 1833 he found he as rather unpopular due to works he had writtenwhile living in Europe, namely Notions of the Americans and Letter toGeneral Lafayette. He left New...
