James Fenimore Cooper (1789 - 1851), American author, best known for his stories of frontier life and pioneer adventure. His most popular work is The Last of the Mohicans(1832)

He was the son of a wealthy, landowning Judge William Cooper, born in Burlington, New Jersey. The year after his birth, the family moved to Cooperstown, New York, a frontier settlement founded by Judge Cooper near Otsego Lake. Sent to Yale at thirteen, Cooper was expelled in his third year and was sent to sea, partly in the merchant marines, and then as a midshipman in the US navy. In 1811, he married Susan DeLancey and settled down as a gentleman farmer.

The first of Cooper's fifty-odd books, Precaution (1820), was a failure, but his second, The Spy (1821), was a patriotic story of the American Revolution and was an immediate success. He and his wife lived abroad from 1826 - 1833, and during this time he vigorously defended American democracy in his writings, but on his return to the United States he was so disgusted by what he saw as the tyranny of the majority, or even mob rule, that he acquired conservative and aristocratic views which made him unpopular as a social commentator.

In 1823, Cooper published The Pioneers with which his fascination with frontier adventure can be said to have started. In Natty Bumpo, the hero of his "Leatherstocking" novels, Cooper created the archetype of the rugged frontier woodsman. Among Cooper's other noted works are The Deerslayer (1840) and The Pathfinder (1841).

Cooper died on September 14, 1851 and was buried in the cemetery of Cooperstown.