JAMES FENIMIRE COOPER-2

James Fenimore Cooper was the second American to make a success of a writing career. He followed Washington Irving to Europe in order to establish the English and Continental rights to his novels and to give his daughters the advantages of European schooling.

In his early novels, Cooper reveals an enthusiasm for the outdoors, dangerous action, and a consuming zeal for what he termed “American ideas.” With the even greater success of The Last of the Mohicans (1826), perhaps the best and certainly the most widely popular of his Native American tales, his avocation as a novelist became his profession.