Cooper, James Fenimore
Cooper, James Fenimore( 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 toward plot...
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