James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, on September 15, 1789, the twelfth of the thirteen children of William Cooper and Elizabeth Fenimore. The following year William Cooper moved the family to a primitive frontier settlement in upstate New York that he had founded in 1785 and which came to be known as Cooperstown. Growing up in what was seen as one of the outposts of white civilization in North America, James was exposed early on in life to the beauty and grandeur of his country's natural scenery and, at the same time, to the increasingly conspicuous signs of the “march of progress.” Indeed, James's charismatic and domineering father (land-settlement agent, and later judge and congressman) was one of the driving fo

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First published 18 June 2003

Citation: Buonomo, Leonardo. "James Fenimore Cooper". The Literary Encyclopedia. 18 June 2003.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1009, accessed 9 February 2010.]