James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, the son of Quakers, Judge William Cooper and Elisabeth Fenimore Cooper. His father was a representative of the 4th and 6th Congress, and had attained wealth by developing virgin land. The family moved to Cooperstown, New York, which Judge Cooper had founded. James Fenimore spent his youth partly on the family estate on the shores of Otsego Lake. He roamed in the primeval forest and developed a love of nature which marked his books. Cooper was educated in the village school, and in 1800-02 in the household of the rector of St. Peter's.

      From the early 1810s Cooper took up the comfortable life of a gentleman farmer. He lived in Mamaroneck, New York from 1811 to 1814, then in Cooperstown, and from 1817 to 1821 in Scarsdale, New York. A change of fortune connected with his father's estate ended the Coopers' rural idyll. He settled in Westchester, living on his wife's land. He was very fond of reading and one day when he had finished an English novel he said: "I could write a better story than that myself!" When his wife challenged him to write the book Cooper set to work, beginning a prolific literary career.
     Cooper's first novel Precaution (1820) was an imitation of Jane Austen's novels and did not meet with great success. His second, The Spy(1821), , set in Westchester Country, was based on Sir Walter Scott's Waverly series, and told an adventure tale about the American Revolution. The protagonist is Harvey Birch, a supposed loyalist who actually is a spy for George Washington, disguised as 'Mr Harper'. The book brought Cooper fame and wealth and he gave up farming. Scott inspired Cooper to draw stereotypes of light and dark, good and evil, and dichotomize the female into the fair and pure and the dark and tainted. In 1823 appeared The Pioneers. It started his preoccupation with a series of frontier adventures and pioneer life, in which he spent about twenty years. The novels depicted the adventures of Natty Bumppo, also called Leatherstocking or Hawkeye, and his Indian companion Chingachgook. The books, which were not written in chronological order, included the classics The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, and The Prairie (1827).
     Cooper had the idea of transporting Leatherstocking to the Far West while he was writing The Last of the Mohicans. He had read with care Major Stephen H. Long's account of his expedition up the Platte River. During the spring of 1826 or earlier he met a young Pawnee chief who became the model for Hard-Heart in The Prairie. From the narrative of the Lewis and Clark expedition he took such names as Mahtoree and Weucha for Sioux chiefs. The character of Natty, who stood about six feet in his moccasins, drew upon folk traditions of historical pioneers such as Daniel Boone. Natty's friendship with the Delaware chief Chingachgook established him as a mediating figure between the white, advancing settlers, and the threatened culture of the Native Americans. Natty himself was educated by the Delaware Indians, who gave him the name 'Hawkeye'.
     In the beginning of the 1820s Cooper lived in New York City and participated in its intellectual life and politics. He wrote a series of sea adventures, starting from The Pilot (1824), a genuine American sea tale about the exploits of John Paul Jones. It was followed by The Red Rover (1827), The Wing and Wing (1842), The Two Admirals (1842), Afloat and Ashore (1844), Miles Wallingford (1844), and The Sea Lions (1849).