James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was an American novelist raised in Cooperstown, New York. Expelled from Yale, he served in the navy, married and settled as a gentleman farmer, and took up writing at thirty on a bet with his wife. The Spy in 1821 was the first American novel to find a wide audience, and the five Leatherstocking Tales, The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer, created the frontier hero Natty Bumppo and the American wilderness as a literary subject. He spent seven years in Europe, quarreled with his countrymen on his return and sued newspapers for libel.