Dec 27, 2009

The Deerslayer | Biography

Known as the first great American novelist, James Cooper (the middle name Fenimore was added in 1826) was born on September 15, 1789, in Burlington, New Jersey, the twelfth of the thirteen children of William Cooper (a wealthy, landowning judge) and Elizabeth Fenimore Cooper. In 1790, the family moved to Cooperstown, in central New York, a settlement near Otsego Lake. The lake, known also as Glimmerglass, was later to be the setting for Cooper’s novel, The Deerslayer.

Cooper entered Yale College in 1803, at the age of thirteen, but was expelled for misconduct two years...