James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was born at Burlington, New Jersey, and brought up at Cooperstown, the settlement his father founded in upstate New York. He was expelled from Yale, served in the merchant marine and the navy, and began to write at thirty. The five Leatherstocking Tales — The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie, The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer (1841) — are his monument; he also wrote sea novels and a naval history of the United States.