Literary Criticism Book reviews and recommendations

"Pioneering American novelist James Fenimore Cooper lived from 1789 until 1851. In THE EARLY YEARS, Professor Wayne Franklin ends his biography when 36 year old Cooper boards a ship in 1826 to travel for the better part of a decade in Europe with his wife and five children. By 1826 James Cooper's best known novel THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS was in print. These and earlier works started his reputation at home and abroad. *** Author Franklin roots his narrative in documents, some not available until the 1990s. But he is not afraid to speculate. If, for instance, he knows that Cooper was in one city at the beginning of his honeymoon and knows when he arrives at Cooperstown but not by what overland route, he will guess and then use his guess as a starting point for describing landscapes more familiar to Cooper's bride Susan than to James himself. *** JAMES FENIMORE COOPER: THE EARLY YEARS is filled with often fascinating excursuses into the lives and times of seemingly every relative, schoolmate, naval officer colleague and acquaintance James Cooper (he added Fenimore later) ever had. Thus we see the impact that President Thomas Jefferson's embargo on trade with Britain had on the economy of New York State. We investigate the tenacious hold of dueling on officers of the young American navy. We learn how chance meetings with Indians or time spent in still Dutch-feeling Albany furnish materials for novels and Cooper's pioneering history of the U. S. Navy. *** The book has helpful contemporary black and white illustrations, lavish notes and an excellent bibliography. Wanting are maps of colonial and early American New York. All in all a book indispensable to lovers of James Fenimore Cooper and early American history. -OOO-"