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James Fenimore Cooper
Portrait by John Wesley Jarvis
Born	September 15, 1789 Burlington, New Jersey
Died	September 14, 1851 Cooperstown, New York
Occupation	Novelist

James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is particularly remembered as a novelist, who wrote numerous sea-stories as well as the historical romances known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, which many people consider his masterpiece.

Early life

Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, on the 15th of September 1789, the twelfth of William and Elizabeth Cooper's thirteen children (most of whom died in childhood). When James was one year old, his family moved to the frontier of Otsego Lake, New York, where his father established a settlement on his yet unsettled estates which became modern-day Cooperstown, New York. His father was a judge and member of Congress. James was sent to school at Albany and at New Haven, and attended Yale College 1803-1805 as its youngest student, but was expelled, apparently for a dangerous prank involving blowing up another student's door as well as stealing food.

Three years afterward he joined the United States Navy; but after making a voyage or two in a merchant vessel to perfect himself in seamanship, and obtaining his lieutenancy, he married Susan Augusta de Lancey (the wedding took place in Mamaroneck, New York, on New Years Day, 1811) and resigned his commission (1811). He had married into one of the best families in the state.

His father William died in 1810, when James was twenty years old, but the legacy he left his son influenced his entire career. Almost one half of Cooper's novels are about populating the wilderness, in The Pioneers his father appears directly, as Judge Marmaduke Temple of Templeton.

Literary career

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Cooper settled in Scarsdale, Westchester County, New York, the “Neutral Ground” of his earliest American romance, and produced anonymously (1820) his first book, Precaution, a novel of the fashionable school. This was followed (1821) by The Spy, which was very successful at the date of issue; The Pioneers (1823), the first of the Leatherstocking series; and The Pilot (1824), a bold and dashing sea-story. The next was Lionel Lincoln (1825), a feeble and unattractive work; and this was succeeded in 1826 by the famous Last of the Mohicans, a book that is considered by many to be Cooper's masterpiece. Quitting America for Europe he published in Paris The Prairie (1826), the best of his books in nearly all respects, and The Red Rover, (1828), by no means his worst.

At this period Cooper's unequal and uncertain talent would seem to have been at its best. These novels were, however, succeeded by one very inferior, The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829); by The Notions of a Travelling Bachelor (1828); and by The Waterwitch (1830), one of his many sea-stories. In 1830 he entered the lists as a party writer, defending in a series of letters to the National, a Parisian journal, the United States against a string of charges brought against them by the Revue Britannique; and for the rest of his life he continued skirmishing in print, sometimes for the national interest, sometimes for that of the individual, and not infrequently for both at once.

This opportunity of making a political confession of faith appears not only to have fortified him in his own convictions, but to have inspired him with the idea of elucidating them for the public through the medium of his art. His next three novels, The Bravo (1831), The Heidenmauer (1832) and The Headsman: or the Abbaye of Vigneron (1833), were expressions of Cooper's republican convictions. The Bravo depicted Venice as a place where a ruthless oligarchy lurks behind the mask of the "serene republic." All were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic, though The Bravo was a critical failure in the United States.

In 1833 Cooper returned to America and immediately published A Letter to My Countrymen, in which he gave his own version of the controversy in which he had been engaged and sharply censured his compatriots for their share in it. This attack he followed up with The Monikins (1835) and The American Democrat (1835); with several sets of notes on his travels and experiences in Europe, among which may be remarked his England (1837), in three volumes, a burst of vanity and ill temper; and with Homeward Bound and Home as Found (1838), notable as containing a highly idealized portrait of himself.

All these books tended to increase the ill feeling between author and public; the Whig press was virulent and scandalous in its comments, and Cooper plunged into a series of actions for libel. Victorious in all of them, he returned to his old occupation with something of his old vigour and success. A History of the Navy of the United States (1839), supplemented (1846) by a set of Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers, was succeeded by The Pathfinder (1840), a good “Leatherstocking” novel; by Mercedes of Castile (1840); The Deerslayer (1841); by The Two Admirals and by Wing and Wing (1842); by Wyandotte, The History of a Pocket Handkerchief, and Ned Myers (1843); and by Afloat and Ashore, or the Adventures of Miles Wallingford (1844).

From pure fiction, however, he turned again to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction, and in the two Littlepage Manuscripts (1845—1846) he wrote with a great deal of vigour. His next novel was The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery; and this was succeeded by Oak Openings The Two Admirals and Jack Tier (1848), the latter a curious rifacimento of The Red Rover; by The Sea Lions (1849); and finally by The Ways of the Hour (1850), another novel with a purpose, and his last book.

Cooper's work was admired greatly throughout the rest of the world. While on his death bed, the Austrian composer Franz Schubert became an avid reader of Cooper's novels.

The Leatherstocking tales

The five Leatherstocking novels chronicle the life of Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo, who lives in the frontier (which moves steadily westward with each successive novel,) at the intersection of European and Native American culture. Bumppo is a hybrid of these cultures; in each book, he has a different Native American name, and it is by these names that he is known. These books are a lucid and insightful study of the encounter between the two cultures, from the point of view of a man who manages to straddle the divide between them.

Last years and legacy

Cooper spent the last years of his life in Cooperstown, New York (named for his father). He died of dropsy on the 14th of September 1851 and a statue was later erected in his honor.

Cooper was certainly one of the most popular 19th century American authors. His stories have been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe and into some of those of Asia. Balzac admired him greatly, but with discrimination; Victor Hugo pronounced him greater than the great master of modern romance, and this verdict was echoed by a multitude of inferior readers, who were satisfied with no title for their favourite less than that of “the American Scott.” As a satirist and observer he is simply the “Cooper who's written six volumes to prove he's as good as a Lord” of Lowell's clever portrait; his enormous vanity and his irritability find vent in a sort of dull violence, which is exceedingly tiresome. He was most memorably criticised by Mark Twain whose vicious and amusing "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences" is still read widely in academic circles.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

Cooper's writings

Sources for this table include:

• http://www.oneonta.edu/external/cooper/bibliography/works.html
• http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jfcooper.htm
• http://www.jamesfenimorecooper.com/
• http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/cooper.htm
• http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/c

Modern editions of Cooper

• The Leatherstocking Tales, vol. 1, Blake Nevius, ed. (New York: The Library of America, 1985) ISBN 0-940450-20-8. Includes The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie.
• The Leatherstocking Tales, vol. 2, Blake Nevius, ed. (New York: The Library of America, 1985) ISBN 0-940450-21-6. Includes The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer.

• Sea Tales: The Pilot, The Red Rover, Kay Seymour House & Thomas Philbrick, eds. (New York: The Library of America, 1991) ISBN 0-940450-70-4

External links

• Works by James Fenimore Cooper at Project Gutenberg
• James Fenimore Cooper Society Website
• Essay on Fenimore Cooper: Works in biographical/historical context
• Thomas R. Lounsbury: James Fenimore Cooper. 6th Edition. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1886 (American Men of Letters). PDF in the Arno Schmidt Reference Library
• The Cambridge History of American Literature, Fiction I: Brown, Cooper
• Find-A-Grave profile for James Fenimore Cooper
• "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (1895), by Mark Twain.

• James Fenimore Cooper at IMDb

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet among whose works were Paul Revere's Ride, A Psalm of Life, The Song of Hiawatha and Evangeline. He also wrote the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets. Longfellow was born and raised in the Portland, Maine area. He attended university at an early age at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. After several journies overseas, Longfellow settled for the last forty-five years of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a brick house once occupied during the American Revolution by General George Washington and his staff.

Contents 1 Early life and education 2 First European tour and professorship at Bowdoin 3 Second European tour and professorship at Harvard 4 Marriage to Frances "Fanny" Appleton 5 The death of Frances 6 Death 7 Longfellow's work 8 Quotations and manuscript 9 Trivia 10 Bibliography 11 Notes 12 External links

Early life and education

Birthplace in c. 1910Longfellow was born in 1807 to Stephen and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow in Portland, Maine, and grew up in what is now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House. His father was a lawyer, and his maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth Sr., was a general in the American Revolutionary War. He was descended from the Longfellow family that came to America in 1676 from Yorkshire, England and from Priscilla and John Alden on his father's side

Longfellow's siblings were Stephen (1805), Elizabeth (1808), Anne (1810), Alexander (1814), Mary (1816), Ellen (1818), and Samuel (1819).

Longfellow was enrolled in a "dame school" at the age of only three, and by age six, when he entered the Portland Academy, he was able to read and write quite well. He remained at the Portland Academy until the age of fourteen and entered Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in 1822. At Bowdoin, he met Nathaniel Hawthorne, who became his lifelong friend. He was a 5th great grandson of John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley who were on the Mayflower.

First European tour and professorship at Bowdoin After graduating in 1825, he was offered a professorship at Bowdoin College with the condition that he first spend some time in Europe for further language study He toured Europe between 1826 and 1829 (visiting England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy and Spain), and upon returning went on to become the first professor of modern languages at Bowdoin, as well as a parttime librarian. During his years at the college, he wrote textbooks in French, Italian, and Spanish and a travel book, Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea . In 1831, he married Mary Storer Potter of Portland.

Second European tour and professorship at Harvard

Henry Wadsworth LongfellowLongfellow was offered the Smith Professorship of French and Spanish at Harvard with the stipulation that he spend a year or so abroad. His 22-year old wife, Mary Storer Porter died during the trip in Rotterdam after suffering a miscarriage in 1835. Three years later he was inspired to write "Footsteps of Angels" about their love.

When he returned to the United States in 1836, Longfellow took up the professorship at Harvard University. He settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remained for the rest of his life, although he spent summers at his home in Nahant. He began publishing his poetry, including "Voices of the Night" in 1839 and "Ballads and Other Poems", which included his famous poem "The Village Blacksmith", in 1841.

Marriage to Frances "Fanny" Appleton

Fanny Appleton LongfellowLongfellow began courting Frances "Fanny" Appleton, the daughter of a wealthy Boston industrialist, Nathan Appleton. During the courtship, he frequently walked from Harvard to her home in Boston, crossing the Boston Bridge. That bridge was subsequently demolished and replaced in 1906 by a new bridge, which was eventually renamed as the Longfellow Bridge. After seven years, Fanny finally agreed to marriage and they were wed in 1843. Nathan Appleton bought the Craigie House, overlooking the Charles River as a wedding present to the pair.

His love for Fanny is evident in the following lines from Longfellow's only love-poem, the sonnet "The Evening Star," which he wrote in October, 1845: "O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus! My morning and my evening star of love!"

He and Fanny had six children:

Charles Appleton (1844-1893) Ernest Wadsworth (1845-1921) Fanny (1847-1848) Alice Mary (1850-1928) Edith (1853-1915) Anne Allegra (1855-1934). When the younger Fanny was born on April 7, 1847, Dr. Nathan Cooley Keep administered the first obstetric anesthetic in the United States to Fanny Longfellow.

Longfellow retired from Harvard in 1854, devoting himself entirely to writing. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of Laws from Harvard in 1859.

The death of Frances Longfellow was a devoted husband and father with a keen feeling for the pleasures of home. But his marriages ended in sadness and tragedy.

Longfellow and his good friend Senator Charles SumnerOn a hot July day, while putting a lock of a child's hair into an envelope and attempting to seal it with hot sealing wax, her dress caught fire causing severe burns.She died the next day, aged 44, on July 10, 1861. Longfellow was devastated by her death and never fully recovered. The strength of his grief is still evident in these lines from a sonnet, "The Cross of Snow" (1879) which he wrote eighteen years later to commemorate her death:

Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These forty five years, through all the changing scenes And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

Death Longfellow died on March 24, 1882, after suffering from peritonitis for five days.

He is buried with both of his wives at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1884 he was the first American poet for whom a commemorative sculpted bust was placed in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.

Longfellow's work

LongfellowLongfellow was such an admired figure in the United States during his life, that his 70th birthday in 1877 took on the air of a national holiday, with parades, speeches, and the reading of his poetry. He had become one of the first American celebrities.

His work was immensely popular during his time and is still today, although some modern critics consider him too sentimental. His poetry is based on familiar and easily understood themes with simple, clear, and flowing language. His poetry created an audience in America and contributed to creating American mythology.

Longfellow's poem "Christmas Bells" is the basis for the Christmas carol "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day".

Longfellow's home in Cambridge, the Longfellow National Historic Site, is a U.S. National Historic Site, National Historic Landmark, and on the National Register of Historic Places. A two-thirds scale replica was built in Minneapolis, Minnesota at Minnehaha Park in 1906 and once served as a centerpiece for a local zoo.

Noted minister, writer and abolitionist Edward Everett Hale founded organizations called the Harry Wadsworth Clubs.

Quotations and manuscript And children coming home from school Look in at the open door (...)

The Village Blacksmith (manuscript page 1)

"ships that pass in the night" "Love is sunshine, hate is shadow, life is checkered shade and sunshine." "It takes less time to do a thing right than explain why you did it wrong." "A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child." " The grave is but a covered bridge Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!" "Give what you have to somebody, it may be better than you think." "It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun."

Trivia A number of schools are named after him in various states, including Maine, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Montana, Pennsylvania, New York and Texas. "Longfellow Serenade" is a pop song by Neil Diamond. In March, 2007, Longfellow was honored with a commemorative stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service.

Bibliography "America's Longfellow" An Essay by Matthew Gartner, 2002. National Park Service - Longfellow House. http://home.nps.gov/long/historyculture/upload/Gartner%20Essay.pdf Poems and Other Writings, J.D. McClatchy, ed. ( New York: The Library of America, 2000) ISBN 1-883011-85-X Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "The Poetical Works of Longfellow" Houghton Mifflin. 1975

Notes ^ Longfellow birthplace ^ ^ Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "The Poetical Works of Longfellow" Houghton Mifflin. 1975 p. xx ^ Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "The Poetical Works of Longfellow" Houghton Mifflin. 1975 pp. xx - xxi

External links Wikisource has original works written by or about: Henry Wadsworth LongfellowWikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Henry Wadsworth LongfellowPoems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at PoetryFoundation.org Works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at Project Gutenberg Audio - Hear the Village Blacksmith Maine Historical Society Searchable poem text database, biographical data, lesson plans. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/Henry_Wadsworth_Longfellow" Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | 1807 births | 1882 deaths | American poets | Americans with Huguenot ancestry | Bowdoin College alumni | Harvard University faculty | Maine writers | Massachusetts writers | People from Cambridge, Massachusetts | People from Portland, Maine | People from Maine

• 1789 births
• 1851 deaths
• American novelists
• Naval historians
• Otsego County, New York people
• People from New Jersey
• Romanticism
• United States Navy officers