Novelist and social critic James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was the first major American writer todeal imaginatively with American life, notably in his five "Leather-Stocking Tales." He was also a critic of the political, social, and religious problems of the day.

James Cooper (his mother's family name of Fenimore was legally added in 1826) was born in Burlington, N.J., on Sept. 15, 1789, the eleventh of 12 children of William Cooper, a pioneering landowner and developer in New Jersey and New York. When James was 14 months old, his father moved the family to a vast tract of wilderness at the headwaters of the Susquehanna River in New York State where, on a system of small land grants, he had established the village of Cooperstown at the foot of Otsego Lake.

Here, in the "Manor House," later known as Otsego Hall, Cooper grew up, the privileged son of the "squire" of a primitive community. He enjoyed the amenities of a transplanted civilization while reading, in the writings of the wilderness missionary John Gottlieb Heckewelder, about the Native Americans who had long since retreated westward, and about life in the Old World in the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen. Meanwhile, he attended the local school and Episcopal church. The lore of the wilderness learned from excursions into the surrounding forests and from local trappers and hunters, the stories of life in the great estates of neighboring Dutch patroons and English patentees, and the gossip of revolution-torn Europe brought by refugees of all classes furnished him with materials for his later novels, histories, and commentaries.

For the present, however, Cooper was a vigorous and obstreperous young man who was sent away to be educated, first by a clergyman in Albany, and then at Yale, from which he was dismissed for a student prank. His father next arranged for him to go to sea, first in a merchant vessel to England and Spain, and then in the Navy; these experiences stimulated at least a third of his later imaginative writing.

When Cooper returned to civilian life in 1811, he married Susan Augusta DeLancey of a formerly wealthy New York Tory family and established himself in Westchester County overlooking Long Island Sound, a gentleman farmer involved in the local militia, Agricultural Society, and Episcopal church. It was here, at the age of 30, that he published his first novel, written on a challenge from his wife.

First Period of His Literary Career

Precaution was an attempt to outdo the English domestic novels Cooper had been reading, which he imitated in choice of theme, scene, and manner. But he soon realized his mistake, and the next year, in The Spy, he deliberately attempted to correct it by choosing the American Revolution for subject, the country around New York City he knew so well for scene, and the historical romance of Scott for model. Thereafter, although many of his novels combined the novel of manners with the historical romance, as well as with other currently popular fictional modes, he never again departed from his concern for American facts and opinions, even though for some of his tales he chose, in the spirit of comparative analysis, scenes in foreign lands and waters.

All of the novels of the first period of Cooper's literary career (1820-1828) were as experimental as the first two. Three dealt with the frontier and Native American life (The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Prairie), three with the sea (The Pilot, The Red Rover, and The Water Witch), and three with American history (The Spy, Lionel Lincoln, and The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish).

Discovering the "American Problem"

The success of his first America-oriented novel convinced Cooper that he was on the right track, and he decided to turn to his childhood memories for a truthful, if not wholly literal, tale of life on the frontier: The Pioneers (1823). Judge Temple in the novel is Judge Cooper, and Templeton is Cooperstown; and originals for most of the characters can be identified, as can the scenes and much of the action, although all of it is given what Cooper called "a poetical view of the subject." Though the traditional novel of manners deals realistically with a group of people in a closed and stable community using an agreed-upon code of social ethics, Cooper tried to adapt this form to a fluid and open society, thereby illuminating the core of the "American problem": how could the original trio of "unalienable rights" - life, liberty, and property (not, as Jefferson had it, the pursuit of happiness) - be applied to a society in which the rights of the Native American possessors of the land were denied by the civilized conqueror who took it from them for his own profit, thus defying the basic Christian ethic of individual integrity and brotherly love?

Natty Bumppo (or Leather-Stocking as he is called in the series as a whole) is neither the "natural man" nor the "civilized man" of European theorists such as John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau; he is the American individualist who is creating a new society by a code of personal fulfillment under sound moral self-guidance, improvising as he goes along. In The Pioneers Natty is a somewhat crotchety old man whose chief "gift" is his ability to argue his rights with both Indian John and Judge Temple. The central theme which knits this complex web of people and adventures into the cycle of a single year is the emergence of Leather-Stocking as the "American hero."

At this point Cooper was feeling his way toward a definition of his social concern, but in the novel itself the problem is almost submerged in the excitement, action, and vivid description and narrative. In the next of the Leather-Stocking series, The Last of the Mohicans, Natty is younger and the romantic story line takes over, making it the most popular of all Cooper's novels. In The Prairie Natty in his last days becomes a tragic figure driven west, into the setting sun, in a futile search for his ideal way of life. To most of Cooper's readers these stories are pure romances of adventure, and their social significance is easily overlooked.

In The Pilot (1824) Cooper was drawn to the sea by what he felt was Scott's mishandling of the subject, and he thus discovered a whole second world in which to explore his moral problem. The American hero, John Paul Jones, like other patriots of the time, is in revolt against the authority of the English king, and yet, in his own empire of the ship, he is forced by the dangers of the elements to exert an even more arbitrary authority over his crew. There is a similar problem in The Red Rover, the story of a pirate with a Robin Hood complex, and in The Water-Witch, a tale of a gentleman-rogue, which is less successful because Cooper turned from the technique of straight romantic narrative to that of symbolism.

Cooper's two historical novels of the period (other than The Spy), Lionel Lincoln and The Wept of Wishton-Wish, are set in New England, where Cooper was never at home. The former, although thoroughly researched, is trivial, but in the latter, in spite of lack of sympathy, Cooper made a profound study of the conflict between Puritan morality and integrity and the savage ethic of the frontier.

Second Period

His reputation as a popular novelist established, Cooper went abroad in 1826 to arrange for the translation and foreign publication of his works and to give his family the advantages of European residence and travel. He stayed 7 years, during which he completed two more romances, but thereafter, until 1840, he devoted most of his energy to political and social criticism - both in fiction and in nonfiction. Irritated by the criticisms of English travelers in America, in 1828 he wrote a defense of American life and institutions in a mock travel book, Notions of the Americans Picked Up by a Travelling Bachelor.

Settling his children in a convent school in Paris, he traveled from London to Sorrento, Italy, and also stayed in Switzerland, Germany, France, and England. Europe was astir with reform and revolutionary movements, and the outspoken Cooper was drawn into close friendships with the Marquis de Lafayette and other liberal leaders. One product of this interest was a trio of novels on European political themes (The Bravo, The Heidenmauer, and The Headsman), but the American press was so hostile to them that Cooper finally declared, in his 1834 A Letter to His Countrymen, that he would write no more fiction.

This resolution, however, lasted only long enough to produce five volumes of epistolary travel essay and commentary on Europe (Gleanings in Europe and Sketches of Switzerland ); The Monikins, a Swiftean political allegory; and various works on the American Navy, including a definitive two-volume history, a volume of biographies of naval officers, and miscellaneous tracts.

In 1833 Cooper returned to America, renovated Otsego Hall in Cooperstown, and settled his family there for the rest of his life. There is much autobiography in the pair of novels Homeward Bound and Home as Found (1838), in which he reversed himself to attack the people and institutions of his own land with the same keen critical insight that he had applied to Europe. One reason for this was that a series of libel suits against Whig editors helped personalize his quarrel with the equalitarian and leveling tendencies of the Jacksonian era. He won the suits but lost many friends and much of his reading public. His social and political position is succinctly summed up in The American Democrat (1838).

Third Period

The third period of Cooper's literary career began in 1840-1841 with his return to the Leather-Stocking series and two more chapters in the life of Natty Bumppo, The Pathfinder, in which Cooper used his own experiences on Lake Ontario during the War of 1812, and The Deerslayer, which fills in the young manhood of his hero. These romances were followed by equally vigorous tales of the sea, The Two Admirals and Wing-and-Wing.

But the most significant development of this period was Cooper's final success in blending the romantic novel of action and the open spaces with the novel of manners and social concern. Returning for subject to the scenes of his first interest, the estates and villages of early upstate New York (with their mixed population of Dutch patroons, English patentees, small farmers and woodsmen, and variegated adventurers carving out civilization in a wilderness peopled by Native Americans and rife with unexploited wildlife of all kinds), he wrote five novels in two series: Afloat and Ashore (1844) and its sequel, Miles Wallingford, and the "Littlepage Manuscripts" (1845-1846), depicting in a trilogy (Satanstoe, The Chainbearer, and The Redskins) the four-generation history of a landed family from their first days of settlement to the days of the disintegration of their privileged way of life in the face of rampant, classless democracy. Largely unread and unappreciated in their day, these five novels, especially Satanstoe, have since become recognized as Cooper's most successful fulfillment of his intention. He had always wished to write a chronicle of his times in fictional form in order to interpret for his countrymen and the world at large the deeper meanings of the "American experiment" in its formative years.

Meanwhile, Cooper's concerns for individual and social integrity and for change had hardened into moral and religious absolutes, and the novels of his last 4 years were less story and more allegory. The best of these, The Crater (1847), succeeds where The Water-Witch and The Monikins failed, in using symbolism to convey a narrative message.

Cooper's Achievement

The power and persistence of this first major American author in attempting a total imaginative redaction of American life, coupled with an equal skill in the description of place and the depiction of action, overcame the liabilities of both the heavy romantic style current in his day and his substitution of the character type for the individual character. Appreciated first in Europe, the most action-packed of his novels survived the eclipse of his reputation as a serious literary artist (brought about through attacks on his stormy personality and unpopular social ideas) and have led to a restudy of the whole of his work in recent years. In this process Cooper has been restored to his rightful place as the first major American man of letters.

Further Reading

Probably the most satisfactory short biography of Cooper is James Grossman, James Fenimore Cooper (1949), although Donald A. Ringe, James Fenimore Cooper (1962), gives fuller critical treatment of Cooper's works, and Robert E. Spiller, Fenimore Cooper: Critic of His Times (1931), provides more background analysis of Cooper's social ideas. None of these biographers had the advantage of James F. Beard, who edited The Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper (6 vols., 1960-1968), and a new biography is needed.

For more information on James Fenimore Cooper, visit Britannica.com.

(1789-1851), novelist and historian. Son of a Federalist judge, Cooper was expelled from Yale for a dangerous prank. He then joined the navy but resigned his commission to marry. He converted to Jeffersonian principles, but then tried to live as an eighteenth-century gentleman while the fevers of Jacksonian democracy swept the land. At the height of his popularity as a novelist, he took his family to Europe, and during his seven-year stay, he wrote a fascinating assessment of his native land, Notions of the Americans (1829), and gathered the materials for four travel books. A Letter to His Countrymen (1834) was a bitter attack on American provincialism. Upon his return in 1833 he retreated to Cooperstown and plunged into a series of lawsuits designed to force the townspeople to respect the sanctity of private property and truth in journalism. The American Democrat (1838), designed as a textbook for high school students, lectured Americans on their political and social responsibilities.

By the time of his death Cooper had developed an international reputation as America's "national novelist," but he was also a keen observer of the political and cultural life of his nation, an accomplished controversialist, and a fine naval historian. His studies of naval history included The History of the Navy of the United States of America (1839), The Cruise of the Somers (1844), and Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers (1846).

But it is for his fiction that Cooper is best known, especially for the mythic sweep and power of his five Leatherstocking novels (The Pioneers, 1823, The Last of the Mohicans, 1826, The Prairie, 1827, The Pathfinder, 1840, and The Deerslayer, 1841). The Leatherstocking series represents, in D. H. Lawrence's words, "a decrescendo of reality, and a crescendo of beauty," but all his novels engaged historical themes and helped to form the popular sense of American history and romantic historiography in the nineteenth century.

In his second novel, The Spy (1821), Cooper adapted the historical romance of Sir Walter Scott to an array of themes suggested by the American Revolution: the legitimacy of the rebellion, the enfeebling arrogance of British officers, the random violence of paramilitary groups of self-proclaimed patriots, the patriarchal benevolence of Washington as the "father of his country," and the cultural centrality of the outcast spy of the title, Harvey Birch. It was an immediate success and, together with Washington Irving's The Sketch Book (1820) and William Cullen Bryant's Poems (1821), was cited as evidence that American culture had begun to produce a worthwhile democratic art.

For his next novel, The Pioneers, he drew on his experience growing up in the frontier village of Cooperstown to investigate what it meant to inherit the American history of conflict over possession of the landscape, setting the claims of Native Americans, British Loyalists, American Patriots, roaming hunters, and forest-clearing farmers against each other. If the novel wistfully resolves all these conflicts in the marriage of the children of all the contending parties, it nevertheless succeeds brilliantly as a thoroughly American fiction, not least in its invention of the Leatherstocking, Natty Bumppo, Cooper's essential American hero. Other novels similarly (and sometimes as successfully) engaged American history. The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829) was set in Connecticut in the period of King Philip's War; the "Littlepage Trilogy" (Satanstoe, The Chainbearer, and The Redskins, 1845-1846) chronicled events of the Anti-Rent Wars in New York (1839-1846) virtually as they occurred.

The weaknesses of Cooper's fiction are famous. James Russell Lowell called attention to Cooper's undemocratic class consciousness and to the limitations of his female characters: "And the women he draws from one model don't vary, / All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie." Mark Twain hilariously skewered the excesses of Cooper's romanticism in "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (1895). Moreover, all his fictions reflect Cooper's didactic concern to educate his audience in the requirements of democracy, and he could be oppressively schoolmasterish. But his characters (including women) are often more richly developed than is usually recognized and compose a remarkable gallery of American types. The novels also constitute a record of American life and society and at their best present a richness, depth, and complexity that was unsurpassed in American fiction before the works of Hawthorne and Melville.

Bibliography:

James Franklin Beard, ed., The Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, 6 vols. (1960-1968); John P. McWilliams, Political Justice in a Republic: James Fenimore Cooper's America (1972).

Author:

James D. Wallace

See also Literature.

1789–1851, American novelist, b. Burlington, N.J., as James Cooper. He was the first important American writer to draw on the subjects and landscape of his native land in order to create a vivid myth of frontier life.

In 1790 Cooper's family moved to Cooperstown, N.Y., a frontier settlement founded by his father near Otsego Lake. The landscape and history of the area was to greatly influence many of his most famous works. Sent to Yale at 13, Cooper was dismissed for a disciplinary reason in his third year. Soon after he went to sea; commissioned as a U.S. midshipman, he served until 1811, at which time he married and settled into life as a gentleman farmer.

Cooper's literary career, which covers a period of 30 years and includes more than 50 publications, began in 1820 with the appearance of Precaution. Imitative of the English novel of manners, this book failed to gain an audience; but his next work, The Spy (1821), a patriotic story of the American Revolution, was an immediate success. With The Pioneers (1823), the first of the famous Leatherstocking Tales, and The Pilot (1823), an adventure of the high seas, Cooper's reputation as the first major American novelist was established.

In 1826 Cooper went to France, nominally as American consul at Lyons. He spent several years abroad, publishing such novels as The Red Rover (1827), The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829), and The Water-Witch (1830), romances of American life on land and sea. In Notions of the Americans (1828) he defended his country to European critics; but upon his return home, repelled by what he saw as the abuses of American democracy, Cooper became the staunch social critic of American society. Such works as The American Democrat (1838) and the fictional Homeward Bound and its sequel, Home as Found (both 1838), express the conservative, aristocratic social views that made him quite unpopular; his later life was filled with many quarrels and lawsuits over his works.

In his most important novels, the group comprising the Leatherstocking Tales—which in order of the narrative are The Deerslayer (1841), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840), The Pioneers (1823), and The Prairie (1827)—Cooper skillfully dramatized the clash between the frontier wilderness and the encroaching civilization. Named for their chief character, the forthright frontiersman Natty Bumppo, nicknamed Leatherstocking, the Leatherstocking Tales are notable for their descriptive power, their mastery of native background, and their romanticized portrayal of the Native American.

Cooper's later works include the novels Afloat and Ashore and its sequel, Miles Wallingford (both 1844), and the Littlepage trilogy—Satanstoe (1845), The Chainbearer (1845), and The Redskins (1846)—a study of the conflict between the landholding and the propertyless classes in New York state, in which Cooper shows himself a traditional defender of the rights of property.

Cooper has been criticized for his extravagant plots, his conventional characters, and his stilted dialogue. Nevertheless, he remains the first great American novelist, a vital and original writer of romances of the wilderness and of the sea, and a harshly astute critic of the growing and stumbling American democracy.

Bibliography

See his correspondence (ed. by his grandson, J. F. Cooper, 2 vol., 1922, repr. 1971); biographical and critical studies by R. E. Spiller (1931, repr. 1963), T. R. Lounsbury (1882, repr. 1968), J. P. McWilliams, Jr. (1972), S. Railton (1978), W. Franklin (1982), and W. P. Kelly (1984); bibliography by R. E. Spiller and P. C. Blackburn (1934, repr. 1969).

(1789-1851)

1820	Precaution; or, Prevention Is Better Than a Cure. The novel that launched Cooper's literary career is a novel of manners concerning English high society that receives some critical acclaim but sells poorly. Cooper had written the book after his wife expressed doubt in his declaration that he could write a better book than the English novel he was reading to her.
1821	The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground. A novel concerning a Yankee who serves George Washington by passing behind enemy lines disguised as a peddler. Employing the style of Sir Walter Scott, it is based on a true story with added romantic embellishments, set in America. The novel's success establishes Cooper's literary career.
1823	The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea. An immediately popular patriotic and romantic novel dealing with the conflict between freedom and authority and employing a character based on John Paul Jones. Cooper, a former sailor, had written the book to demonstrate that he could write a better nautical novel than Sir Walter Scott had in The Pirate (1822). Cooper also publishes Tales for Fifteen; or, Imagination and Heart, two short tales for young readers, under the pseudonym of "Jane Morgan," as well as The Pioneers; or, The Source of the Susquehanna. This somewhat autobiographical novel examines the conflict between civilization, represented by Judge Marmaduke Temple, who is establishing the village of Templeton, and wilderness values, personified in Natty Bumppo. In the preface, Cooper claims to have written the novel "exclusively to please myself: so it would be no wonder if it displeased every body else," but it proves a great success, selling thirty-five hundred copies before noon on the first day of its publication. Some modern scholars consider it the best of all his novels; it is the first of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales.
1825	Lionel Lincoln; or, The Leaguer of Boston. This story of a British officer with a mysterious family history details the first months of the Revolution, with descriptions of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Intended as the first in a series of Revolutionary stories, it receives a poor response.
1826	The Last of the Mohicans. The second Leatherstocking Tale is set during the French and Indian War. Natty Bumppo and the two remaining Mohican Indians, Chingachgook and his son Uncas, guide two daughters of a British commander to Fort William Henry, saving them from the treacherous Indian Magua, who is secretly working for the French.
1827	The Prairie. A Leatherstocking Tale in which Natty Bumppo saves an immigrant train from an Indian raid, rescues the betrothed of Duncan Uncas Middleton (a descendant of his friend in The Last of the Mohicans) from kidnappers, and rescues them all again from capture by the Sioux, while surviving a prairie fire and buffalo stampede before his own death. Cooper also publishes The Red Rover, a sea novel concerning Lieutenant Henry Ark's search for the infamous pirate Red Rover. Ark learns that Rover had become a pirate after escaping from the Royal Navy due to his allegiance to the colonies and that he later renounced piracy and became an honorable patriot. According to the March 1850 issue of United States Democratic Review, it is "the most popular of all Mr. Cooper's works."
1828	Notions of the Americans, Picked Up by a Travelling Bachelor. Written for General Lafayette, who had requested an account of his travels in the United States from 1824 to 1825, this book purportedly recounts the travels of an Englishman, occurring at the same time as Lafayette's trip. The book glorifies the United States and insults England. It is ill received in both England and the United States, and to it Cooper traces the deterioration of his literary prosperity.
1829	The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish: A Tale. The story of Conanchet, a young captive Indian who lives with the Heathcote family and flees during an Indian attack, taking the young Heathcote daughter, Ruth, with him. Ruth becomes known as Narra-mattah and marries Conanchet, and together they save the Heathcote family from another attack years later during King Philip's War. Although the only American review of the book called it "a failure," the book is important to modern critics, who disagree as to Cooper's intentions in the novel, some believing that it upholds prejudices of his time and others arguing that it challenges them.
1830	The Water-Witch; or, The Skimmer of the Seas. A romantic novel set during Queen Anne's War, concerning a brigantine with a witch on board. The captain, "The Skimmer of the Seas," runs an illegal trade into New York. Skimmer has abducted Alinda de Barberie and is pursued by her suitor, Ludlow, the captain of the English sloop Coquette. However, the two men battle together against French ships, and Alinda is eventually returned to Ludlow. This story is Cooper's effort to create a New Jersey legend, as Washington Irving had achieved one for New York. The novel would often be successfully adapted for the theater.
1831	The Bravo: A Tale. A romantic novel concerning an Italian who pretends to be a hired assassin for the Venetian senate in order to free his father from unjust imprisonment. Cooper's best novel with a European setting, it attempts to show the righteousness of democracy in contrast to rule by aristocracy.
1832	The Heidenmauer; or, The Benedictines: A Legend of the Rhine. Cooper's second European novel to present the wickedness of aristocracy. It deals with the social shift from Catholicism to secular rule in sixteenth-century Bavaria.
1833	The Headsman; or, The Abbaye des Vignerons. Cooper's third novel criticizing European feudal society and aristocracy concerns the son of an executioner whose identity is hidden so he will not be forced into his father's profession. He reveals his secret to the woman he loves and later learns that he is actually the son of the doge of Genoa.
1834	Letter to His Countrymen. Cooper's first publication after returning from seven years in Europe discusses controversies that arose in England from his defense of American ideals and his condemnation of the powerful elite. It also attacks the press, President Jackson, Congress, and Americans. He ends the work with a proclamation that he will quit writing.
1836	Sketches of Switzerland. Cooper chronicles four tours drawn from his journals, providing lessons in appreciating the picturesque. Creeping into his writing is a lament for the lost pristine American landscape compared to the unspoiled Swiss scenes.
1838	Homeward Bound; or, The Chase: A Tale of the Sea. The story of the Effingham family's voyage home after several years in Europe, providing a social commentary through their encounters with the other passengers. It is followed the same year with the sequel Home as Found. Cooper had written the novels after he returned to America, following seven years abroad. He found the country, to his great displeasure, much changed. He was particularly frustrated by a controversy with his neighbors over land on Otsego Lake, which led to lawsuits and personal attacks in Whig newspapers.
1838	The American Democrat; or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America. A criticism of America written after seven years in Europe, this book presents Cooper's conservative opinion of American government and society. Cooper was attacked in the press for this work and his other post-European writings on America. He won many libel suits against newspapers but lost his fortune in the process.
1839	History of the Navy. The first attempted American maritime history studies the beginnings and expansion of the navy, gives vivid accounts of battles, and considers the future of the institution. Although Cooper's account of the Battle of Lake Erie has been questioned regarding its veracity, the overall work is lauded as accurate.
1840	The Pathfinder; or, The Inland Sea. A Leather-Stocking Tale in which Mabel Dunham promises to marry Natty Bumppo if he saves her father from an Iroquois attack. Natty saves him but relinquishes Mabel to Jasper Western, whom he knows she loves and who has proved not to be a traitor.
1841	The Deerslayer; or, The First War-Path. A Leather-Stocking Tale of Natty Bumppo's youth in which he is depicted hunting and fighting the Hurons with the Delaware Indians near Otsego Lake. Judith, whom he has protected from an Iroquois attack, professes her love for Natty, who refuses her, although he always fondly remembers the romantic memories of the relationship, even after she has married a British officer.
1842	Wing-and-Wing; or, Le Feu-Follet: A Tale. A romantic sea adventure, set on the island of Elba during the Napoleonic Wars, in which the devout Catholic daughter of the Neapolitan admiral Caraccioli refuses to marry her beloved French privateer because he is an atheist. An account of the infamous execution of Admiral Caraccioli is included.
1843	Ned Myers; or, A Life Before the Mast. A biography, written as fiction but based on the stories of Cooper's former shipmate. It is his most accurate depiction of life at sea. Cooper also publishes Wyandotté; or, The Hutted Knoll: A Tale, a story about the divided loyalties of a New York family during the Revolution and a retired British officer who is ruined for his refusal to choose sides. It is the first of Cooper's works dealing with the conflict between New York's tenant farmers and landowners that escalated into the Anti-Rent War (1839-1846), which Cooper would treat in his Littlepage Manuscripts trilogy (1845-1846).
1844	Afloat and Ashore. In this novel, two orphaned sons of a Revolutionary naval officer run away to sea with a black slave. They fight Malay pirates and become shipwrecked in Madagascar before returning home to New York. One of the boys, Miles, sets out again, traveling to South America and China and returning to become the master of his own ship. This work is followed later in 1844 with a sequel, Miles Wallingford, in which Miles again goes to sea in search of a fortune in trade but instead is imprisoned and pressed into service. He escapes to New York, where he learns that his estate has been seized, and he is imprisoned for debt. In the end, he is bailed out by the woman he loves and realizes that he belongs on the farm he almost lost while seeking riches. Based on Cooper's own experiences, it marks his first use of first-person narration.
1845	Satanstoe; or, The Littlepage Manuscripts: A Tale of the Colony. The first Littlepage Manuscript, written in response to the Anti-Rent controversy in New York. The trilogy argues against forcing landlords to sell their property through tales that depict the hardships that the Littlepage family endures to secure their settlements. The first tale concerns their struggle to survey lands amid the invasion of the French and the Indians. In the second of the Littlepage Manuscripts, also published in 1845, The Chainbearer, the family fights squatters who are stealing timber.
1846	Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers. This complement to Cooper's History of the Navy (1836) presents sketches of prominent naval men, including Commodore Woolsey and John Paul Jones, and is highly commended for its historical importance and graceful narrative.
1846	The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin: Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts. Cooper dramatizes an attempted raid on the Littlepage property, Ravensnest, by a group of Anti-Rent agitators disguised as Indians. The novel is Cooper's most aggressive defense of New York's patroon system, supporting feudal-like landowners rather than the claims of the propertyless class, which he felt threatened violence and mob rule.
1848	The Crater; or, Vulcan's Peak: A Tale of the Pacific. The story of a utopian island in the Pacific that sinks into the sea after clergymen, a lawyer, and an editor create conflict there. It offers Cooper's opinion of government and his diagnosis of the decaying values in American society. Oak Openings; or, The Bee-Hunter, Cooper's final wilderness tale, deals with bee-hunting and Indian fighting on Lake Michigan and has a religious theme, affirming Christian faith. Cooper also publishes The Sea Lions; or, The Lost Sealers, his last sea tale. It recounts Captain Kidd's life and describes a treasure-hunting expedition in the West Indies based on the island chart found among Kidd's belongings. The work also contains a story of whaling in the Antarctic and again affirms Cooper's Christianity.

Quotes:

"The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity."

"The American doctrinaire is the converse of the American demagogue, and, in this way, is scarcely less injurious to the public. The first deals in poetry, the last in cant. He is as much a visionary on one side, as the extreme theoretical democrat is a visionary on the other."

"Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery."

"Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being, as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner."

"The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society."

"The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms."

See more famous quotes by James F. Cooper

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