Biographical Fact Sheet on James Fenimore Cooper James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey on September 15, 1789. He was the eleventh of twelve children born to William and Elizabeth Cooper. When James was one year old the family moved to the frontier, and his father established the settlement of Cooperstown at the head of Susquehanna River. Cooper attended a private preparatory school at Albany, New York, and was then admitted to Yale in 1803. He …showed first 75 words of 525 total…

…showed last 75 words of 525 total…Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841). Cooper's popularity declined in his later years as he entered into the nationalistic and partisan disputes of the Jacksonian era, becoming increasingly contentious toward reviewers and the public. Cooper died at Cooperstown on September 14, 1851, one day before his sixty-second birthday. Cooper was, and continues to be, and immensely popular writer, and he is generally considered to be the first major American novelist.