Cooper settled in
Scarsdale, Westchester County, New York, the “Neutral Ground” of his earliest American romance, and produced anonymously his first book,
Precaution(1820), a novel of the fashionable school. This was followed by
The Spy (1821), which was very successful at the date of issue;
The Pioneers (1823), the first of the
Leatherstocking series; and
The Pilot (1824), a bold and dashing sea-story. The next was
Lionel Lincoln (1825), followed in 1826 by
Last of the Mohicans, a book that is considered by many to be Cooper's masterpiece. The book was written in a second-story storefront-apartment in
Warrensburg, New York, just north of where most of the book's plot takes place. Quitting America for
Europe he published in
Paris The Prairie (1826) and
The Red Rover, (1828).
At this period Cooper's talent seems to have been at its best. These novels were succeeded by:
The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829); by
The Notions of a Traveling Bachelor (1828); and by
The Waterwitch (1830), one of his many sea-stories. In 1830 he entered the lists as a party writer; in a series of letters to the
National, a Parisian journal, he defended the United States against a string of charges brought against them by the
Revue Britannique. For the rest of his life he continued skirmishing in print, sometimes for the national interest, sometimes for that of the individual, and not infrequently for both at once.
This opportunity to make a political confession of faith appears not only to have fortified him in his own convictions, but to have inspired him with the idea of elucidating them for the public through the medium of his art. His next three novels,
The Bravo (1831),
The Heidenmauer (1832) and
The Headsman: or the Abbaye of Vigneron (1833), were expressions of Cooper's
republican convictions.
The Bravo depicted
Venice as a place where a ruthless
oligarchy lurks behind the mask of the "serene republic." All were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic, though
The Bravo was a critical failure in the United States.
http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/susan/susan-bravo.html
In 1833 Cooper returned to America and immediately published
A Letter to My Countrymen, in which he gave his own version of the controversy in which he had been engaged and sharply censured his compatriots for their share in it. This attack he followed up with
The Monikins (1835) and
The American Democrat (1835); with several sets of notes on his travels and experiences in Europe, among which may be remarked his
England (1837), in three volumes, and with
Homeward Bound and
Home as Found (1838), notable as containing a highly idealized portrait of himself.
All these books tended to increase the ill feeling between author and public; the
Whig press was virulent and scandalous in its comments, and Cooper plunged into a series of actions for
libel. Victorious in all of them, he returned to his old occupation with something of his original vigor and success.
A History of the Navy of the United States (1839), supplemented (1846) by a set of
Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers, was succeeded by
The Pathfinder (1840), a good “Leatherstocking” novel; by
Mercedes of Castile (1840);
The Deerslayer (1841); by
The Two Admirals and by
Wing and Wing (1842); by
Wyandotte, The History of a Pocket Handkerchief, and
Ned Myers (1843); and by
Afloat and Ashore, or the Adventures of Miles Wallingford (1844).
He turned again from pure fiction to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction, and in the two
Littlepage Manuscripts (1845—1846) he wrote with a great deal of vigour. His next novel was
The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery; and this was succeeded by
Oak Openings,
The Two Admirals, and
Jack Tier (1848), the latter a curious rifacimento of
The Red Rover; by
The Sea Lions (1849); and finally by
The Ways of the Hour (1850), another novel with a purpose, and his last book.
Cooper's work was admired greatly throughout the world. While on his death bed, the Austrian composer
Franz Schubert became an avid reader of Cooper's novels.
