Cooper's Last Novels, 1847–1850

Abstract

Until the appearance of James Grossman's biography in 1949, James Fenimore Cooper's last five novels had received little critical attention. The nineteenth century practically ignored them. Even William Cullen Bryant in his judicious memorial address delivered in 1852 passed over them with hardly a word, while thirty years later, Thomas R. Lounsbury flatly stated that “not one of them has the slightest pretension to be termed a work of art.” In the twentieth century, the first critics to concern themselves with the rehabilitation of Cooper's reputation—Vernon L. Parrington, Robert E. Spiller, and Yvor Winters—concerned as they were with the broader aspects of Cooper's thought, devoted little space to the discussion of tales that were not especially pertinent to their immediate purposes. During the last dozen years, however, the novels have begun to attract more attention, with Harold H. Scudder and W. B. Gates in particular pointing out various sources that Cooper used in composing two of the tales. Among the critics, Grossman has written the fullest analyses of the individual books, and, most recently, Howard Mumford Jones and Charles A. Brady have each treated the late novels at some length. All three have pointed out the strong religious emphasis apparent in several of them.