One of the most famous writers who worked in the genre of adventure literature, we can safely call Fenimore Cooper. Despite the fact that he was an American, and relations between the USSR and the USA were rather strained, many of his works were actively translated into Russian and widely circulated. More than one generation of Soviet children has grown on Cooper’s books.
His parents had 12 children, of which he was the penultimate. The writer’s name was James Fenimore Cooper, and English-language publications were usually signed by his full name, while in Russian-speaking his first name was always omitted. Rivalry between English and American writers has always existed, but even English critics highly praised the work of Fenimore Cooper, respectfully calling him “American Walter Scott”. Fenimore Cooper has traveled a lot in his life. In Europe, he spent a total of about seven years . His works have been repeatedly filmed in different countries. In the Soviet Union in 1989, postage stamps were even issued, on which was a portrait of Fenimore Cooper.
In the United States, a considerable part of his life, the writer lived in the village of Cooperstown. This name is not accidental – once the village was founded by his own father. Fenimore Cooper had seven children, but his daughter Susan decided to follow in her father’s footsteps, and also achieved considerable success in the field of writing. F. Cooper’s wife was partially American with French roots. He published his first work, the novel Caution, which was set in England, anonymously, as he feared that British critics would react negatively to the work of the American writer. On the path of literature Fenimore Cooper pushed his wife. Once he read a book and stated that it would be possible to write it better. The wife caught him at the word. I had to keep the word. So the aforementioned novel “Caution” appeared.
In his youth, Fenimore Cooper managed to serve in the Navy. He never received a higher education, since he was expelled from the university due to systematic violations of discipline. During his European travels, Fenimore Cooper wrote travel notes. There were so many of them that later, when he decided to publish them, it turned out as many as five volumes. The first books of Fenimore Cooper were published in Russian more than a century and a half ago, at the end of the first half of the 19th century.
