James Fenimore Cooper is a classic of American literature. Over the course of 30 years of his writing career, he created about 20 novels, the most popular of which was The Last of the Mohicans.
Biography
James Fenimore Cooper was born in 1789 in the small American town of Burlington. His father, William Cooper, served two terms in the United States Congress and founded the village of Cooperstown in New York. Soon after the birth of their son, the entire large family moved to this place. The mother of the future writer Elizabeth Fenimore was a wealthy heiress from a wealthy Swedish family.
Young Cooper did not differ in good behavior and diligent attitude to his studies. He was kicked out of high school at Yale for bad behavior and a bad joke on a friend. During these years, he began to think about the work of a navigator. In 1806, he enters the service of a merchant ship and begins his journey. Already 4 years later, the 21-year-old was awarded the rank of an officer of the navy.
Personal life
In 1811, Cooper married Susan Auguste Delancey, a wealthy French heiress. In this marriage, seven children were born, two of whom, unfortunately, did not live for several years.
One of James Cooper's daughters, Susan Fenimore Cooper, followed in her father's footsteps and became a writer. Her work is known only within the framework of her native country and is rarely translated into other languages. The great-grandson of James, Paul Fenimore Cooper, who published children's books and popular science literature, devoted his life to writing.
Almost the entire Cooper family lived in the town founded by their wealthy ancestor William Cooper, Cooperstown. James Fenimore Cooper himself died there in 1851. The cause of death was an exacerbation of dropsy.
Bibliography
The young man's writing career began quite by accident. One day, his wife, Susan, read him the lines of one of the modern novels. Cooper noted that he himself could have written a work as well, if not better. The couple made a bet. In the same year, at the age of 31, James publishes his first novel, Precaution.
For a long time, the author did not take his work seriously, and there could be no question of publication. But, moving through the pages of his own novel, he began to clearly understand that this is really not so bad. Hiding his authorship, Cooper read his work to some relatives who liked the work. This was a turning point at the beginning of his career as a writer - he took his work to a publishing house. The novel was published in a number of magazines without an indication of the author and went almost unnoticed, but Cooper realized what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
After 3 years, he published his serious and conscientious work - "The Pioneers, or At the Origins of Saskuihanna", where the character Nathaniel Bumpo first appears, later appearing in several books. He is also the main character of the author's most popular work - "The Last of the Mohicans".
In total, during his writing career, James Fenimore Cooper published about 50 works, 20 of which are novels. "The Last of the Mohicans" was first filmed in 1968, then in 1992.
