Hailing from Burlington, New Jersey, James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was one of the most popular American authors of the early nineteenth century. A writer of historical romances about frontier and American Indian life, Cooper was also influenced by his early career as a midshipman in the US Navy. Cooper’s works—among them, The Deerslayer, The Pathfinder, and The Last of the Mohicans, considered to be his masterpiece—were popular not only with American audiences, but abroad as well, and were translated into many languages. Cooper died the day before his sixty-second birthday, in Cooperstown, New York, the village founded by his father and where he spent much of his life.
