The author James Fenimore Cooper's wife Susan had wagered in 1820 he could write a book better than the one she was reading.
This resulted in a novel entitled Precaution, or Prevention is Better than Cure (1820), also known simply as Precaution, a novel of morals and manners that reveals the influence of Jane Austen.
He anonymously published this first book, and soon issued several others.
The Coopers had moved in 1822 to New York City, where James devotes his time to writing professionally.
In 1823, he had published The Pioneers, the first novel of the Leatherstocking series, featuring Natty Bumppo, the resourceful American woodsman at home with the Delaware Indians and especially their chief Chingachgook.
He also produced the first of his sea novels, The Pilot, in 1823. Cooper's most famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), garners international acclaim: it will become one of the most widely read American novels of the nineteenth century.
In 1826, Cooper moves his family to Europe, where he seeks to gain more income from his books as well as provide better education for his children.
Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, to William and Elizabeth (Fenimore) Cooper, the eleventh child of twelve children, most of whom died during infancy or childhood.
He is a descendant of James Cooper, of Stratford-upon-Avon, England, who emigrated to American colonies in 1679.
He and his wife were Quakers who purchased plots of land in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Seventy five years after his arrival to America his great-grandson, William, was born on December 2, 1754, father of the author.
Shortly after the Revolutionary war, William Cooper had purchased several thousand acres of land in upstate New York along the headwaters of the Susquehanna River.
By 1788, William had selected and surveyed the site where Cooperstown would be established, on the shore of Otsego lake, surrounded by the American Indians of the Six Nations.
A dwelling-house was erected, and in the autumn of 1790 and after moving belongings, servants and carpenters to the location he began construction of what would become Otsego Hall which was completed in 1799 when James was ten years old.
At the age of thirteen, Cooper was enrolled at Yale, but he did not obtain a degree due to his expulsion, apparently incited by a dangerous prank that involved blowing up another student's door.
Because of these incidents and Cooper's restless and adventurous disposition, he was expelled during his third year and obtained work in 1806 as a sailor, joining the crew of a merchant vessel at the age of seventeen.
Cooper joined the United States Navy on January 1, 1808 when he received his commission as a midshipman.
Because Cooper had conducted himself well as a sailor, his father, a former U.S. Congressman, had easily secured a commission for his son through his connections with politicians and naval officials At twenty, Cooper had inherited a fortune from his father.
On January 1, 1811, at age twenty one, he married Susan Augusta de Lancey, at Mamaroneck, Westchester County, New York, the daughter of a wealthy family that remained loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolution. (They will have seven children, five of whom will lived to adulthood.)
In 1823, Cooper was living in New York on Beach Street in what is now downtown's Tribeca.
While there, he became a member of the Philadelphia Philosophical Society.
In August of that year, his first son died.
In 1824, General Lafayette had arrived from France aboard the Cadmus at Castle Garden in New York City as the nation's guest.
Cooper had witnessed his arrival and was one of the active committee of welcome and entertainment.
