COOPER, JAMES FEN !MORE ( 1789-1851). An American novelist, born at Burlington, N. J., September 15, 1789. His• father came of good English and Quaker stock: his mother, Elizabeth Fenimore. was a Swede and also of Quaker an cestry. was the eleventh of twelve children, and in his second year was taken by his father, William, to a large estate that he lead acquired near Otsego Lake shortly after the Revolution. Here had been already laid out the site of Coop erstown. For some years the family lived in a log house, but the settlement prospered, and, de termining to make it his home permanently, Cooper's father, who for many years represented the district in Congress, began in the year 1796 to build a manor house, Otsego Hall. which was for many years the finest residence in that region. That Cooper thus spent his boyhood years on the frontier of civilization, surrounded by primeval forests, and never far removed from the possi bility of Indian raids, while in daily contact with the red men who came to Cooperstown for trade, was most important to his future literary de velopment. The environment stimulated his imagination, made him responsive to the sense of mystery, and gave him materials for the most important section of his writings, the Leather stocking Tales. He passed through the village school and received private instruction in the family of the Rev. Mr. Ellison, rector of Saint Peter's, Albany, whose refined culture and un American ideals had a not altogether desirable effect on the style and character of the future novelist, who was something of an aristocrat at heart. In :January, 1803, Cooper went to Yale College. Here be learned more out of doors than in the classroom. Indeed, he neglected his studies with such persistent defianee of academic re straints that he was expelled in his third year.
His father resented the action of the faculty, but readers may be glad that the future novelist of the sea should have been led to choose a naval career. To tit himself for this, there being no Naval Academy at that time, Cooper entered the merchant service as a sailor before the mast (September. 18061, and after sixteen months' ex
perience on the sea, in London, and at Gibraltar, received a midshipman's commission (January 1, 18081. He served for a time on the Vesuvius, then with a construction party on Lake Ontario, where he saw a new aspect of frontier life and became familiar with the details of ship-building. He saw also other forms of naval service before his resignation in 1311. Meantime he had been married (January 1, 1811) to a daughter of John Peter DeLancey, who came of a conspicuous Tory family. The marriage was happy, but Coop er's resignation on the eve of the War of 1812 did not escape criticism, for a Tory connection seemed to imply lack of patriotism. For the next ten years he lived chiefly in Westchester County, his wife's home, devoting himself to farming and becoming the father of six children before he conceived the idea of authorship. As it was, he began to write, less in emulation of the success of others than through conviction of their failure. He had been reading an English novel aloud, \viten he suddenly said to his wife, "1 believe I could write a better story myself," and proceeded to try it. But Precaution (1820), dealing with high life in England, about which Cooper knew nothing, was naturally a failure, and wholly uncharacteristic of his future work. Then when advised to deal with more local themes, he remem bered a story that John Jay had told years before about a spy, and his home in Westchester, the scene of much fighting during the Revolution, furnished a fit stage for the play of his fancy. The result was The Spy (1821-22), which achieved a success till then unapproachcd in America, and determined its author to pursue his new-found career. It proved to a very self conscious generation that it was not impossible for America to produce a novelist almost worthy of being ranked with the great author of Warcr Icy. Even to-day it remains a stirring narrative that deals adequately with important events, and in Harvey Birch. the Spy, it has added to our na tional fiction one of its few imperishable char acters.