Cooper’s Cave

Cooper’s Cave. Cooper Visits the Cave. , "The travellers were struck with those stern, sombre rocks, and the flood falling in fantastic wreaths of white foam about them. While in the caverns, one of the gentlemen...observed to Mr. Cooper that here was the very scene for a romance.... The writer promised...that a book should actually be written, in which these caves should have a place; the idea of a romance essentially Indian in character then first suggesting itself to his mind... , Susan Fenimore Cooper (James Fenimore Cooner's daughter) , Pages and Pictures from the Writings of James Fenimore Cooper (New York, 1861) , Cooper's Cave Suggests a Novel , In August 1824 a rising young American novelist from New York accompanied four distinguished English tourists around the upper Hudson, visiting Lake Champlain, Lake George, Saratoga and Ballston Springs, and Glens Falls. Edward Stanley (later Earl of Derby and Prime Minister of Great Britain), who had suggested that Cooper base a novel on the Glens Falls cave, noted in his diary that "[Cooper] was much struck with the scenery...and exclaimed that'I must place one of my old Indians here', The Last of the Mohicans was the result.", Cooper's Early Life , James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey on September 15, 1789, and a year later he was brought to Cooperstown, the New York frontier village founded by his father William Cooper in 1786., Educated in Albany and at Yale College, Cooper ran away to sea at the age of 17. After over a year as a merchant sailor he was appointed by President Jefferson as a Midshipman in the United States Navy. In Oswego, New York, he helped construct the first American navy ship on the Great Lakes., In 1811 he married Susan DeLancey, daughter of a prominent Westchester County family, and then lived for several years at Fenimore Farm in Cooperstown. In 1817 he moved to Scarsdale in Westchester County., A Writer is Born , Cooper wrote his first novel in 1820, supposedly on a dare from his wife. Though the fortune he had inherited from his father evaporated after the War of 18 12, he turned to writing more as amusement than with any hope of earning a living at it. , In 1821 he published his second book, The Spy, based on stories of espionage and adventure in Westchester County during the Revolution. It was an instant success Americans were delighted with their first real. opportunity to read stories about their own country and its history. Cooper followed it up with The Pioneers (1823), based on his childhood in Cooperstown, and The Pilot (1824), suggested by the exploits of Revolutionary naval hero John Paul Jones. Both were best-sellers, and Cooper became known at home and abroad as America's first important novelist. , Writing The Last of the Mohicans , Cooper's novel was written during the summer of 1825, at a farm on the North River in what is now Astoria, Queens. His descriptions of the life and culture of Native Americas came from the works of John Heckewelder, a Moravian missionary in Pennsylvania and Ohio who spent his life among the Delaware Indians. He could not have chosen better; no American in the 1820's was better informed about, or more sympathetic to Native Americans, their ways of life, or their sad plight.