James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper was born September 15, 1789, and spent his boyhood in Cooperstown, New York, a town his father William had founded on his own property. After three years at Yale as a member of the Linonian Society, he left for a commercial voyage and then served as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy, learning the mechanics of sailing that would shape much of his writing. The Spy, an espionage tale set during the Revolutionary War, launched his career in 1821. Between 1823 and 1841 he wrote the five Leatherstocking Tales - historical novels of the frontier that introduced Natty Bumppo, the scout who became an American archetype. The Last of the Mohicans, often called his masterpiece, emerged from that cycle. He published social, political, and historical works throughout his career, aiming to counter European prejudices and build an original American culture, though contemporaries sometimes bristled at his naval writings even as historians later valued them. He joined the Episcopal Church shortly before his death on September 14, 1851, one day shy of his sixty-second birthday.