The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper.

Although now renown for the baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York was the place where Cooper spent most of his life and it was established by and named for his father, United States Congressman, William Cooper. It was his life here, surrounded by Iroquois territory as well as his time in the US Navy that influenced a good deal of his work. Cooper did not begin his literary career until the age of 30, when his wife, also a writer, challenged his claim with a wager that he could produce a better novel than the one she had been reading. Although his first book, Precaution, published anonymously, was not a huge success, he, of course, went on to be one of the most popular 19th-century American authors, and his work was admired greatly throughout the world. Many consider him to be the first true American novelist.