(from the Oxford Companion to American Literature)
James Fenimore
COOPER
(1789-1851),
was born at Burlington, N.J., the son of William Cooper,
who in 1790 removed his family to Otsego Hall, a manorial estate at
Cooperstown on Otsego Lake, west of Albany, N.Y. Educated at the local
school and in Albany, Cooper went to Yale, from which he was dismissed
(1806). During the next five years he served at sea as a foremast-hand,
was a midshipman in the navy (1808-11), and left to marry and settle as
a country gentleman at Mamaroneck. He moved to Cooperstown (1814), but
in 1817 moved again to a farm at Scarsdale.
At 30 he was suddenly plunged into a literary career, when his wife
challenged his claim that he could write a better book than the English
novel he was reading to her. The result was Precaution (1820), a conventional
novel of manners in genteel English society. His second book, The Spy (1821),
was an immediate
success and established Cooper's typical attitude towards plot and
characterization, being significant for its use of the American scene
as the background of a romance. In The
Pioneers (1823) he began his series of Leather-Stocking
Tales, but in his rapid quest
for
unusual subjects he turned to the sea in The Pilot (1823), intending to
prove that a sailor could write a better novel than the landsman Scott
had done in The Pirate
(1822).
Established as a leading American author, he moved to New York City,
where he founded the Bread and Cheese Club. To further his position as
the outstanding American novelist, he planned to write 13 national
romances, one for each of the original states, but wrote only Lionel Lincoln
(1825), dealing with
Revolutionary Boston. Encouraged by the success of The Pioneers and the growing
interest in the clash between savagery and civilization on the
frontier, he continued his history of the pioneer scout Natty Bumppo in
The Last of the
Mohicans (1826) and The Prairie
(1827). While traveling abroad (1826-33), nominally as U.S. consul
at
Lyons, he published The Red Rover
(1827), The Wept
of Wish-ton-Wish
(1829) and The Water-Witch
(1830), romances about America and life on American ships. In
addition,
he wrote The
Bravo (1831), The Heidenmauer (1832), and The Headsman
(1833), a trilogy
intended to dispel the glamor of feudalism and to show its decline
before the rise of democratic liberalism. A Letter . . . to General Lafayette
(1831) champions republics against monarchies, and Notions of the Americans (1828) is
an answer to English critics of U.S. society and government.
Upon his return, Cooper in turn was repelled by the absence of what he
considered to be public and private virtue, the abuses of democracy,
and the failure to perceive the best elements of the life he had
conjured up in his novels. A Letter
to His Countrymen (1834), petulantly expressing his
conservatism, was followed by his satire, The Monikins (1835), and four
volumes of Gleanings in Europe
(1837-38), containing brilliant descriptions and pungent social
criticism. The American Democrat
(1838), a full statement of his aristocratic social ideals, was
followed by Homeward
Bound
(1838) and Home
as Found
(1838), fictional statements of these themes.
During the ensuing years, the press attacked his books and personal
character, and he brought suits for libel against various Whig papers,
arguing his own cases so successfully that he was regularly victorious.
He returned to live at Cooperstown, where his favorite companion and
amanuensis for the rest of his life was his daughter Susan, whose books
describe their home. Here he carried his war with the press to a war
with the people concerning property rights, in which, although he was
constantly vindicated, he stood alone and unpopular.
Meanwhile he wrote a scholarly History
of the Navy
(1839), whose simplicity and gusto were overlooked in a controversy
centering on his treatment of the Battle of Lake Erie. With the
publication of The Pathfinder
(1840) and The Deerslayer
(1841) he completed the epical Leather-Stocking series, and in a
burst
of creative energy wrote 16 works of fiction, a great amount of
controversial literature, and some scholarly and factual works. Mercedes of Castile (1840) deals
with the first voyage of Columbus; The
Two Admirals (1842) is a story of the British Navy before the
Revolutionary War; and Wing-and-Wing
(1842) is concerned with a French privateer in the Mediterranean. Ned Meyers
(1843) is the fictional
biography of a former shipmate, and the Lives of Distinguished American Naval
Officers (1846) supplements the History of the Navy. Wyandotté (1843) deals with the
outbreak of the Revolution in New York; Le Mouchoir (1843), republished as The Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief,
is a short romance of New York society and class distinctions; Afloat and
Ashore (1844) and its
sequel Miles Wallingford
(1844)
seem to present a self-portrait of Cooper; The Crater (1848) is a Utopian
social allegory; and Jack Tier
(1848), The
Oak Openings
(1848) and The Sea Lions
(1848) are all swift-moving historical romances. Cooper's last novel, The Ways of the Hour
(1850), concerned with the perversions of social justice, is a
forerunner of the modern mystery novel. Another late work is an
unpublished comedy, Upside Down, or
Philosophy in Petticoats,
produced in New York. Of the novels written after 1840, the most
important are those in the trilogy known as the Littlepage Manuscripts:
Satanstoe
(1845), The
Chainbearer (1845), and The Redskins (1846), tracing
the
growing difficulties between propertied and propertyless classes in New
York. A collection of Letters and
Journals (6 vols., 1960-68), by James F. Beard gathers all known
previously unpublished manuscripts.
Cooper's achievement, although uneven and the result of brilliant
improvisation rather than a deeply considered artistry, was
nevertheless sustained almost to the close of a hectic, crowded career.
His worldwide fame attests his power of invention, for his novels have
been popular principally for their variety of dramatic incidents, vivid
descriptions of romantic scenes and situations, and adventurous plots.
But a more sophisticated view caused a revival of interest in the
mid-20th century concentrating on Cooper's novels in their creation of
tension between different kinds of society, the settlement and the
wilderness, and between civil law and natural rights as these suggest
issues of moral and mythic import.
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James Fenimore Cooper - Nivel avanzado
