Biography 6

James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851)

Born in Burlington, New Jersey, Cooper grew up in Cooperstown, a central New York State town founded by his father. Much of Cooper's knowledge of the forest and Native Americans was gathered firsthand during his boyhood in a region still very much a wilderness. After being expelled from Yale University in 1805 for his prankish behavior, Cooper served as a sailor in the merchant marine and as a midshipman in the United States Navy. He left naval service in 1811 to marry Susan DeLancey, and for several years managed his wife's income-producing estates in Westchester County, New York.

Cooper began his writing career at the age of 30. He wrote his first book, Precaution (1820), primarily to demonstrate to his wife that he could write a better novel than the one he was reading to her at the time. Precaution was a conventional novel of English manners and was not a success. Cooper chose for his second book a subject closer to home, and the result, The Spy (1821), a novel about the American Revolution (1775-1783) in New York State, was successful both in the United States and abroad. In 1823 Cooper wrote The Pioneers, the first of the five novels that make up the Leather-Stocking Tales. The remaining four books — The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841)— continue the story of Natty Bumppo, one of the most famous characters in American fiction. The Leather-Stocking Tales are noted for their portrayal of American subject matter in American settings. The hero of the tales, Natty Bumppo, embodies the conflict between preserving nature unspoiled and developing the land in the name of progress. He is a white frontiersman with ties to the settlers who nevertheless spends much of his time in the wilderness with Native Americans. The positioning of Natty Bumppo between two modes of living appealed to readers and contributed to Cooper's broad appeal, both in the United States and overseas. During his seven years abroad in Europe from 1826 to 1833, Cooper produced a variety of novels intended to portray realistically the feudalism of medieval Europe.

Cooper's first work after returning to the United States was A Letter to His Countrymen (1834), one of the several works of social criticism in which he expressed his conservative attitude toward democracy. The satire The Monikins (1835) and The American Democrat (1838) continue in the same vein. Despite attacks in the press for his snobbery and antidemocratic stance, Cooper's works remained popular.

Cooper's reputation remains somewhat equivocal. He is widely read in Europe, where his Leather-Stocking Tales contributed to the romantic notion of American frontier life. English novelists praised his work; American writers have been of differing opinions. Herman Melville admired Cooper's sea tales; Mark Twain questioned his knowledge of wilderness survival and ridiculed his handling of character and dialogue. Many critics today, however, perceive sympathetically Cooper's fear that unspoiled nature would eventually be destroyed by the encroachments of civilization.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-05