James Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey in 1789, son of Judge William Cooper and Susan Fenimore. Soon after his birth, Cooper's father moved to New York where James received his elementary education and was "nurtured" on the frontier life. At the age of thirteen, James entered Yale College, but was expelled three years later for his mischievous pranks. Then, in 180, he was sent to sea as a common sailor before the mast for a voyage to London and the Mediterranean on the merchant ship Stirling. In the following ten years, Cooper took furlough from the navy and married, on January 1, Susan De Lancey, the daughter of wealthy landowners in Westchester County, New York.
Between 1819 and 1826, Cooper published his first five novels: Precaution, The Spy, The Pioneers, The Pilot, and The Last of the Mohicans. These books, more or less, set the tone and the scene for many other American novels to be written in the future: the time and territory of colonial and revolutionary America, the sea, and the frontier.
In 1826, he added Fenimore to his name, in honor of his mother, and sailed to Europe where he continued his writing. Seven years later in 1833, Cooper sailed back to America and settled down in Cooperstown. It was here that he died on September 14, 1851, the author of more than eighteen novels, including the Leather-Stocking Tales, and The History of the Navy of the United States of America.
Cooper is best remembered for his tales of life on the sea and of life on the frontier. He was the creator of the American hero, and the critic of the American society. By the use of narrative and descriptive, James Cooper related to his fellow democrats what he thought of life in America.
The novel, The Last of the Mohicans, quite vividly illustrates some of Cooper's predominant techniques of writing: repetition, contrast and conflict.
Repetition can be observed in the author's continuous description of terra...