1．General Introduction
James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales(皮袜子故事集). Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans（最后的莫西干人）, often regarded as his masterpiece.
2．Early life
Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey. His father was a United States Congressman. Shortly after his first birthday, his family moved to Cooperstown, New York, a province founded by his father.
At 13, Cooper was enrolled at Yale, but he did not obtain a degree. He obtained work as a sailor on a merchant vessel, and at 18, Cooper joined the United States Navy. At age 21, he married Susan DeLancey. They had seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood.
3．Later life
He turned again from pure fiction to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction with the Littlepage Manuscripts (1845—1846). His next novel was The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery. Jack Tier (1848) was a rifacimento of The Red Rover, and The Ways of the Hour was his last completed novel.
Cooper spent the last years of his life back in Cooperstown. He died of dropsy on September 14, 1851, the day before his 62nd birthday.
4．Writings：
He anonymously published his first book, Precaution （戒备）(1820). He soon issued several others. In 1823, he published The Pioneers（拓荒者） ; this was the first of the Leatherstocking series. Cooper's most famous novel, Last of the Mohicans (1826), became one of the most widely read American novels of the nineteenth century. The book was written in New York City, where Cooper and his family lived from 1822 to 1826.
In 1832 he entered the lists as a party writer. This opportunity to make a political confession of faith reflected the political turn he already had taken in his fiction, having attacked European anti-republicanism in The Bravo(刺客) (1831). Cooper continued this political course in The Heidenmauer（黑衣教士） (1832) and The Headsman（刽子手）.
In 1833 Cooper returned to America and immediately published A Letter to My Countrymen.
5．Reaction
All these books touching upon the topics of politics and of Cooper himself tended to increase the ill feeling between author and public. The Whig press was particularly virulent in its comments, and Cooper plunged into a series of actions for libel. He emerged victorious in all his lawsuits.
After concluding his last case in court, Cooper returned to writing with more energy and success than he had had for several years. He wrote a history of the US Navy, and then returned to the Leatherstocking series with The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841) and other novels. He then returned to writing on maritime themes, including Ned Myers, or A Life Before the Mast, which is of particular interest to naval historians.
6．Contributions of Cooper
1. The first successful American historical romance in the vein of Sir Walter Scott (The Spy, 1821).
2. The first sea novel (The Pilot, 1824).
3. The first attempt at a fully researched historical novel (Lionel Lincoln, 1825).
4. The first full-scale History of the Navy of the United States of America (1839).
5. The first American international novel of manners (Homeward Bound and Home as Found, 1838).
6. The first trilogy in American fiction (Satanstoe, 1845; The Chainbearer, 1845; and The Redskins, 1846).
7. The first and only five-volume epic romance to carry its mythic hero - Natty Bumppo - from youth to old age.
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