V. James Fenimore Cooper
Cooper, whose name is with his country's wovenFirst in her ranks; her Pioneer of mind.
These were the words in which Fitz-Greene Halleck designated Cooper's substantial precedence in American novel-writing. Apart from this mere priority in time,--he was born at Burlington, New Jersey, September 15, 1789, and died at Cooperstown, New York, September 14, 1851,--he rendered the unique service of inaugurating three especial classes of fiction,--the novel of the American Revolution, the Indian novel, and the sea novel. In each case he wrote primarily for his own fellow countrymen, and achieved fame first at their hands; and in each he produced a class of works which, in spite of their own faults and of the somewhat unconciliatory spirit of their writer, have secured a permanence and a breadth of range unequaled in English prose fiction, save by Scott alone. To-day the sale of his works in his own language remains unabated; and one has only to look over the catalogues of European booksellers in order to satisfy himself that this popularity continues, undiminished, through the medium of translation.
