James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) grew up at Otsego
Hall, his father's manorial estate in upstate New York. Educated at
Yale, he spent five years at sea, before beginning his literary
career at thirty with Precaution (1820), a novel of
manners. His second book, The Spy (1821), was an
immediate success, and with The Pioneers (1823) he began
his series of Leatherstocking Tales. By 1826 when The Last of
the Mohicans appeared, his standing as a major novelist was
established. After several years of writing nonfiction, he
returned to fiction—and to Leatherstocking—with The
Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841).
Volume editors are Kay Seymour House, editor-in-chief of the State University of New York James Fenimore Cooper edition, and Thomas Philbrick, professor emeritus of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
“[Both] novels were admired by Joseph Conrad, who declared, ‘Cooper loved the sea and he looked at it with consummate understanding. His descriptions embrace the colors of sunset, the peace of starlight, the aspects of calm and storm, the great loneliness of the waters.’ " — Boston Globe
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