J Fenimore Cooper

The Monikins. By J Fenimore Cooper

The Monikins is a 1835 novel, written by James Fenimore Cooper. The novel, a beast fable was written between his composition of two of his more famous novels from the Leatherstocking Tales, The Prairie and The Pathfinder. Critic Christina Starobin compares the novels plot to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. The novel, narrated by the main character, the English Sir John Goldencalf, is a satirical novel as Goldencalf alongside the American captain Noah Poke, travel on a series of humorous adventures. The novel is not very popular amongst readers of Cooper. A contemporary critic of the novel in The Knickerbocker, described the novel with great disappointment... James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 - September 15, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. His historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a unique form of American literature. He lived most of his life in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father William on property that he owned. Cooper was a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church and, in his later years, contributed generously to it. He attended Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the Linonian Society, but was expelled for misbehavior. Before embarking on his career as a writer, he served in the U. S. Navy as a Midshipman, which greatly influenced many of his novels ands other writings. The novel that launched his career was The Spy, a tale about counterespionage set during the Revolutionary War and published in 1821. He also wrote numerous sea stories, and his best-known works are five historical novels of the frontier period known as the Leatherstocking Tales. Among naval historians, Cooper's works on the early U. S. Navy have been well received, but they were sometimes criticized by his contemporaries. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece.