Yet, not even Natty's commanding presence should overshadow the whole of Cooper's achievement, which was scattered throughout his novels--his romances of forest and sea, his tales of colonial and revolutionary history, and his novels of politics and society. In the pages of all these works Cooper helped his young nation, still struggling to attain its intellectual independence from Europe, to discover and take imaginative possession of itself.
Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, on 15 September 1789, the same year that George Washington became the first president of the newborn republic. At his birth Cooper was named simply James Cooper. Fenimore, his mother's maiden name, he took for himself when he was thirty-seven and a famous writer. (He actually petitioned the New York state legislature for the right to call himself James Cooper Fenimore, but that request was denied.) From his mother, Elizabeth, he also acquired the taste for reading fiction that led to his eventual choice of a literary career.
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