James Fenimore Cooper was born on September 15, 1789, and grew up in the frontier village of Cooperstown, New York, in the heart of the wilderness he was to immortalize in his novels. Cooper created two unique genres that were to become staples in American literature—the sea romance and the frontier adventure story. In The Last of the Mohicans (1826), Natty Bumppo becomes the well-loved Hawkeye, befriended by Chingachgook; the novel remains a favorite American classic. By the time of his death on September 14, 1851, Cooper was considered America’s “national novelist.”

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