James Fenimore Cooper the Novelist

Originally published in 1967. In this critical survey of the fiction of James Fenimore Cooper, George Dekker devotes a good deal of attention to CooperΓÇÖs politics. He also explores the assimilation and development of the historical novel as first perfected by Sir Walter Scott. CooperΓÇÖs major formal innovations in the field of historical fiction were, like ScottΓÇÖs, something more than mere experiments: they were made because American social and political developments differed radically from those of ScottΓÇÖs Europe and so demanded a different formal expression.