In , he got married to Susan Augusta de Lancey and some of their children also made their name in American literature. It was a wager placed by his wife that had him writing his first novel, Precaution. He anonymously published the novel in Following the publication of his first novel, he wrote several others.
In the Leatherstocking series he produced the first novel, titled The Pioneers , in It was a historical novel set at the frontier of New York State. The novel featured a resourceful American woodsman, Natty Bumppo. Cooper focused on the environmental issues and conservation in the evolving New York, transforming from wilderness to civilized communities.
It is considered to be one of the most widely read book in America during nineteenth century. At this point Cooper was feeling his way toward a definition of his social concern, but in the novel itself the problem is almost submerged in the excitement, action, and vivid description and narrative.
In the next of the Leather-Stocking series, The Last of the Mohicans, Natty is younger and the romantic story line takes over, making it the most popular of all Cooper's novels. In The Prairie Natty in his last days becomes a tragic figure driven west, into the setting sun, in a futile search for his ideal way of life.
To most of Cooper's readers these stories are pure romances of adventure, and their social significance is easily overlooked. In The Pilot Cooper was drawn to the sea by what he felt was Scott's mishandling of the subject, and he thus discovered a whole second world in which to explore his moral problem. The American hero, John Paul Jones, like other patriots of the time, is in revolt against the authority of the English king, and yet, in his own empire of the ship, he is forced by the dangers of the elements to exert an even more arbitrary authority over his crew.
There is a similar problem in The Red Rover, the story of a pirate with a Robin Hood complex, and in The Water-Witch, a tale of a gentleman-rogue, which is less successful because Cooper turned from the technique of straight romantic narrative to that of symbolism. The former, although thoroughly researched, is trivial, but in the latter, in spite of lack of sympathy, Cooper made a profound study of the conflict between Puritan morality and integrity and the savage ethic of the frontier.
His reputation as a popular novelist established, Cooper went abroad in to arrange for the translation and foreign publication of his works and to give his family the advantages of European residence and travel. He stayed 7 years, during which he completed two more romances, but thereafter, until , he devoted most of his energy to political and social criticism—both in fiction and in nonfiction. Irritated by the criticisms of English travelers in America, in he wrote a defense of American life and institutions in a mock travel book, Notions of the Americans Picked Up by a Travelling Bachelor.
Settling his children in a convent school in Paris, he traveled from London to Sorrento, Italy, and also stayed in Switzerland, Germany, France, and England. Europe was astir with reform and revolutionary movements, and the outspoken Cooper was drawn into close friendships with the Marquis de Lafayette and other liberal leaders. One product of this interest was a trio of novels on European political themes The Bravo, The Heidenmauer, and The Headsman , but the American press was so hostile to them that Cooper finally declared, in his A Letter to His Countrymen, that he would write no more fiction.
This resolution, however, lasted only long enough to produce five volumes of epistolary travel essay and commentary on Europe Gleanings in Europe and Sketches of Switzerland ; The Monikins, a Swiftean political allegory; and various works on the American Navy, including a definitive two-volume history, a volume of biographies of naval officers, and miscellaneous tracts.
In Cooper returned to America, renovated Otsego Hall in Cooperstown, and settled his family there for the rest of his life. There is much autobiography in the pair of novels Homeward Bound and Home as Found , in which he reversed himself to attack the people and institutions of his own land with the same keen critical insight that he had applied to Europe.
One reason for this was that a series of libel suits against Whig editors helped personalize his quarrel with the equalitarian and leveling tendencies of the Jacksonian era. He won the suits but lost many friends and much of his reading public. Cooper's impact upon European literature was very great, and he was welcomed warmly, receiving invitations from all quarters. Again, the social life did not interfere with his literary career because Cooper published in one year, , two novels: The Prairie, the third of the "Leatherstocking Tales," and The Red Rover, a sea story.
Cooper also utilized his foreign travels and readings by composing three works with European backgrounds: The Bravo , The Heidenmauer , and The Headsman However, Cooper's writings in Europe, particularly his books with strongly romantic and foreign elements, did not add appreciably to his literary reputation; and these works are only considered as minor productions by critics.
In his less imaginative writings, Cooper antagonized his fellow Americans and his French hosts. He criticized his countrymen too harshly — in their opinion — in Notions of the Americans, although his primary purpose was a defense of the American character. He also mingled unfortunately in French domestic politics in A Letter to General Lafayette, which further disillusioned his compatriots in the United States.
Cooper's return to America in proved an unhappy event. The growing wave of dissatisfaction among many Americans with a respected and important writer the first to win fame abroad caused him to become bitter and hostile. He tried to defend himself in with A Letter to his Countrymen, which only aroused more controversy, but a further defense in with The American Democrat helped him little.
In brief, Cooper found himself trapped between two worlds: in Europe he could not live without expressing his love and hope for American ideas; in the United States he could not accept without protest the vulgarity and ultra-nationalism, so alien to his aristocratic and cosmopolitan tendencies. He saw a decline of the true pioneer spirit in the onrush of expansion toward the West; and he deplored the failure of Christians to practice Christianity in an increasingly materialistic century.
It is not difficult to understand why sensitive, proud, and patriotic readers turned against Cooper and thought that he had betrayed his nation by too lengthy a residence in Europe. Cooper's last years were marked by constant battles to explain his views and to expound his philosophy about his homeland. He engaged in numerous lengthy embroilments with the press and with his neighbors in Cooperstown with suits for slander, libel, and property rights. His study in two volumes, The History of the Navy of the United States Of America, completed in , was recognized as a sound, scholarly reference work.
Cooper's last major literary achievement was a trilogy in which he took the side of the landlords in the Anti-Rent War — a position which further lessened his standing in the community and in outside circles. He returned in several other novels to the theme of the sea and continued to apply his views about contemporary manners and social issues to literary works, such as Wyandotte and The Crater After returning to the United States he did not again achieve the critical, popular, and financial rewards won prior to his European residence.
However, Cooper was recognized and respected as an eminent representative of American literature because of his 32 novels and other writings.
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