James Fenimore Cooper
Ralph Waldo Emerson
John Greenleaf Whittier
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James Filmore Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 , The Pioneers (1823), The Pathfinder (1840)
genre: romanticism,
Characteristics: imagery, strong lead character, Native American activist, included the realism of war.
Time Period: 1790’s to 1850’s same as Emerson
ALL SAME AS EMERSON
"Where are the blossoms of those summers!--fallen, one by one; so all of my family departed, each in his turn, to the land of spirits. I am on the hilltop and must go down into the valley; and when Uncas follows in my footsteps there will no longer be any of the blood of the Sagamores, for my boy is the last of the Mohicans." Chingachgook to Hawkeye, Ch. 3
Cooper's depiction of American Indians was sometimes criticised as unrealistic and implausible. Over fifty years after The Deerslayer (1841) was published Mark Twain served up a heaping plate of sardonic but scathing criticism of it and Cooper in his essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences" (1895). But as Cooper writes in his Introduction to The Last of the Mohicans;
The Mohicans were the possessors of the country first occupied by the Europeans in this portion of the continent. They were, consequently, the first dispossessed; and the seemingly inevitable fate of all these people, who disappear before the advances, or it might be termed the inroads, of civilization, as the verdure of their native forests falls before the nipping frosts, is represented as having already befallen them. There is sufficient historical truth in the picture to justify the use that has been made of it.
Written during the 18th century days of the American Frontier, Cooper popularised the plight of Native peoples in his writings with a sympathetic although romanticised vision. 'White man' Natty 'Hawkeye' Bumppo, nicknamed 'The Long Rifle' embodies the heroic frontiersman who bridges the gap with camaraderie and friendship to the 'Red man', Chingachgook and Uncas, to name a few. Bumppo is the hero of Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales" series, here listed with their publication dates:
The Pioneers: The Sources of the Susquehanna, A Descriptive Tale (1823),
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826),
The Prairie: A Tale (1827),
The Pathfinder: The Inland Sea (1840), and
The Deerslayer: The First War Path (1841)
However, they are best appreciated if read by their fictitious chronological dates that follow Bumppo's life;
The Deerslayer (set in the year 1744),
The Last of the Mohicans (1757),
The Pathfinder (1750s),
The Pioneers (1793),
The Prairie (1804).
Author of sea-tales like The Pilot (1823) and revolutionary war romances like The Spy (1821), Cooper also wrote many short stories and non-fiction works critiquing American values and morals such as in The American Democrat (1838), Homeward Bound (1838), and its sequel Home as Found (1838). Cooper was a friend of Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and is said to have influenced Herman Melville and earned the praise of Wilkie Collins. Many of Cooper's novels are still in print today and have been the source for popular feature film adaptations.
James Cooper was born on 15 September 1789 in Burlington, New Jersey, U.S.A, the eleventh child born to Elizabeth née Fenimore (1752-1817) and Congressman, Judge, and founder of Cooperstown, William Cooper (1754-1809). A year after James was born the family moved to the banks of Otsego Lake in Otsego County, where William built the first home and founded Cooperstown.
Cooper entered Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut in 1803 but was expelled a few years later. He then worked as a sailor on a merchant ship, travelling to such far away places as the Strait of Gibraltar. In 1808 he joined the United States Navy as midshipman and it was on the seas that he started to seriously think of himself as a writer. After the death of his father, he resigned from the Navy and went back to the land to try his hand at farming.
On 1 January 1811, in Mamaroneck, New York, Cooper married Susan Augusta DeLancey (1792-1852) with whom he would have seven children: daughters Elizabeth (1811-1813), Susan (1813-1894), Caroline (1815-1892), Anne (1817-1885), and Maria (1819-1898); and sons Fenimore (1821-1823) and Paul (1824-1895). After living for a time in New Rochelle, New York State, the Coopers moved to Scarsdale, New York where James built a home. Soon after Cooper was spending much time in New York City, where he founded the 'Bread and Cheese Club' in 1822.
In 1826, the same year he legally added Fenimore to his name, James, Susan and the children moved to Europe. Cooper served as United States Consul in Lyons, France, while also travelling to many other countries including Italy, Switzerland, England, and The Netherlands. In 1833 the Coopers returned to the United States, settling in Cooperstown, although Cooper made many trips to New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. He continued his prodigious output of fiction and non including History of the Navy of the United States of America (1839), The Lives of Distinguished Naval Officers (1846), and The Towns of Manhattan (1851).
James Fenimore Cooper died on 14 September 1851 in Cooperstown, New York, U.S.A. He lies buried in the family plot in the Christ Episcopal Churchyard in Cooperstown. His wife Susan survived him by just a few months, and now rests with him.
Biography written by C. D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc. 2007. All Rights Reserved.
The Last of the Mohicans is complete in itself, but is tied to the other stories by Natty Bumppo, the central figure of the series. His character as the last uncorrupted white man who prefers the code of the Indian than the nature of the white settlers, who is loyal, courageous and a superb exponent of wood craft struck a chord with contemporary Americans that still finds an echo today. It is an adventure set in the forests of North America during the Seven Years War (1756-1763) between Great Britain and France. The plot revolves around the efforts of Alice and Cora Munro to join their father, who is the commander of Fort William Henry near Lake Champlain. Their course is blocked by Magua, the leader of a group of Huron Indians who are allied to the French. His schemes are frustrated by Uncas, the last of the Mohicans, his father Chingachgook, and Natty Bumppo. The book is characterized by a series of thrilling attacks, captures, flights and rescues.
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This is a story about a great friendship between Hawkeye, the White Man, and Chingachook, the chief of the Mohicans. It is mainly about rescuing the Munro sisters from being caught, and returning them to safety with their father during the war between the French and the English. The English army are having a problem because there are no more reinforcements. General Webb is scared, and asks Colonel Munro to seek surrender. What happened next? Did Hawkeye and the Mohicans succeed or lose?--Submitted by Diyanah Harun.
Emerson believed in individualism, non-conformity, and the need for harmony between man and nature. He was a proponent of abolition, and spoke out about the cruel treatment of Native Americans. Influenced by the Eastern philosophy of unity and a divine whole, emphasizing God Immanent, to be found in everyone and everything, Emerson sowed the seeds of the American Transcendentalist movement. He realised the importance of the spiritual inner self over the material external self through studying Kantianism, Confucianism, Neo-Platonism, Romanticism, and dialectical metaphysics and reading the works of Saint Augustine, Sir Francis Bacon, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Shakespeare among many others. During his lifetime and since Emerson has had a profound influence on some of the 19th and 20th century's most prominent figures in the arts, religion, education, and politics.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on 25 May 1803 in the Puritan New England town of Boston, Massachusetts to Ruth née Haskins (d.1853) and Unitarian minister William Emerson (d.1811). Young Ralph had a strict but loving upbringing in the household of a minister who died when he was just eight years old. It was the first of many untimely deaths of Emerson's relatives. While his father had died young, he was very close to his mother, siblings, and Aunt Mary Moody who had a great and positive influence on his intellectual growth. Early on young Waldo as he like to be called started keeping journals and later would base many of his essays on his thoughts and observations expressed therein. While his writings were sometimes criticised as being too abstract, he was an eloquent and popular speaker.
After studying the classics at the Boston Latin School, Emerson enrolled in Harvard College, graduating in 1821. He then taught at his brother William's Boston school for young ladies. Emerson's first publication, "Thoughts on the Religion of the Middle Ages" appeared in 1822 in the Christian Disciple. When in 1825, Emerson entered Harvard Divinity School, there was much discussion of and influence from translations of the German critics and Hindu and Buddhist poetry--it was the beginning of his struggle to come to terms with his own Christian beliefs. "Divinity School Address" is one such work.
The same year Emerson was ordained minister in the Second Church in Boston, on 30 September 1829, he married Ellen Louisa Tucker. She died of tuberculosis a few years later and her death caused another wave of religious questioning and doubt for Emerson. He next married Lydia 'Lidian' Jackson (d.1892) on 14 September 1835 with whom he would have four children: Waldo (d. 1842), Ellen (d.1909), Edith, and Edward. They settled in Concord, Massachusetts where they would live for the rest of their lives, their home now the National Historic Landmark Ralph Waldo Emerson House. They entertained many friends and noted artists, free thinkers, poets, authors, and Transcendentalists of the time including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May Alcott. Henry David Thoreau built his Walden Pond cabin on Emerson's property; he watched over Emerson's family when he lectured abroad.
In 1832 Emerson resigned his position with the Church and sailed for Europe. His health had been troubling him for some time, and he was advised to take a rest. He visited England, Scotland, France, and Italy, meeting poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, and philosophers John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle, with whom he maintained a lengthy correspondence, published as Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and R.W. Emerson (1883). English Traits (1856) is based on his travels. Emerson's first book Nature (1836) includes his essays "Nature", "Commodity", "Beauty", "Language", "Discipline", "Idealism", "Spirit", "Prospects", "The American Scholar", "Divinity School Address", "Literary Ethics", "The Method of Nature", "Man the Reformer", "Introductory Lecture on the Times", "The Conservative", "The Transcendentalist", and "The Young American".
Emerson had been lecturing for some time, and in 1838 made his controversial "Divinity School Address at Harvard, whereupon he was labeled an atheist. In 1840 he started The Dial with Margaret Fuller, which served as the official publication of the Transcendentalists until 1844. Emerson was a prolific essayist; many of them first appeared in The Dial, many of them were lectures he had given. Essays: First Series (1841) includes "History", "Self-Reliance", "Compensation", "Spiritual Laws", "Love", "Friendship", "Prudence", "Heroism", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "Intellect" and "Art". Essays: Second Series (1844) includes "The Poet", "Experience", "Character", "Manners", "Gifts", "Nature", "Politics", "Nominalist and Realist", and "New England Reformers".
The same year Emerson embarked on year-long lecture tour of Europe, his poetry collection Poems (1847) was published. Miscellanies; Embracing Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (1849) was followed by another collection of lectures as essays, Representative Men (1850) that includes essays on Plato and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe--"Uses of Great Men", "Plato; or, the Philosopher", "Plato; New Readings", "Swedenborg; or, the Mystic", "Montaigne; or, the Skeptic", "Shakspeare; or, the Poet", "Napoleon; or, the Man of the World", and "Goethe; or, the Writer". The Conduct of Life (1860) appeared just before Emerson started a North American lecture series. His next collection of poetry May-Day and Other Pieces (1867) was followed by Society and Solitude (1870). Emerson next launched into his "Natural History of Intellect" series of lectures at Harvard University.
In 1872 the Emerson family sailed for Europe and Egypt while their home, badly damaged by fire, underwent repairs. When they returned, Emerson continued to write and address students and admirers alike. At the age of seventy-eight, Emerson caught a cold from being out in the New England rainy damp weather and it turned into pneumonia. On 27 April 1882 Ralph Waldo Emerson died at home in Concord, Massachusetts. Lydia survived him by ten years, and now rests beside him on Author's Ridge in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
I love thy music, mellow bell,
I love thine iron chime,
To life or death, to heaven or hell,
Which calls the sons of Time.
Thy voice upon the deep
The home-bound sea-boy hails,
It charms his cares to sleep,
It cheers him as he sails.
To house of God and heavenly joys
Thy summons called our sires,
And good men thought thy sacred voice
Disarmed the thunder's fires.
And soon thy music, sad death-bell,
Shall lift its notes once more,
And mix my requiem with the wind
That sweeps my native shore.
The Three Bells
by John Greenleaf Whittier
BENEATH the low-hung night cloud
That raked her splintering mast
The good ship settled slowly,
The cruel leak gained fast.
Over the awful ocean
Her signal guns pealed out.
Dear God! was that Thy answer
From the horror round about?
A voice came down the wild wind,
"Ho! ship ahoy!" its cry
"Our stout Three Bells of Glasgow
Shall lay till daylight by!"
Hour after hour crept slowly,
Yet on the heaving swells
Tossed up and down the ship-lights,
The lights of the Three Bells!
And ship to ship made signals,
Man answered back to man,
While oft, to cheer and hearten,
The Three Bells nearer ran;
And the captain from her taffrail
Sent down his hopeful cry
"Take heart! Hold on!" he shouted;
"The Three Bells shall lay by!"
All night across the waters
The tossing lights shone clear;
All night from reeling taffrail
The Three Bells sent her cheer.
And when the dreary watches
Of storm and darkness passed,
Just as the wreck lurched under,
All souls were saved at last.
Sail on, Three Bells, forever,
In grateful memory sail!
Ring on, Three Bells of rescue,
Above the wave and gale!
Type of the Love eternal,
Repeat the Master's cry,
As tossing through our darkness
The lights of God draw nigh!
The Lakeside
by John Greenleaf Whittier
The shadows round the inland sea
Are deepening into night;
Slow up the slopes of Ossipee
They chase the lessening light.
Tired of the long day's blinding heat,
I rest my languid eye,
Lake of the Hills! where, cool and sweet,
Thy sunset waters lie!
Along the sky, in wavy lines,
O'er isle and reach and bay,
Green-belted with eternal pines,
The mountains stretch away.
Below, the maple masses sleep
Where shore with water blends,
While midway on the tranquil deep
The evening light descends.
So seemed it when yon hill's red crown,
Of old, the Indian trod,
And, through the sunset air, looked down
Upon the Smile of God.
To him of light and shade the laws
No forest skeptic taught;
Their living and eternal Cause
His truer instinct sought.
He saw these mountains in the light
Which now across them shines;
This lake, in summer sunset bright,
Walled round with sombering pines.
God near him seemed; from earth and skies
His loving voice he beard,
As, face to face, in Paradise,
Man stood before the Lord.
Thanks, O our Father! that, like him,
Thy tender love I see,
In radiant hill and woodland dim,
And tinted sunset sea.
For not in mockery dost Thou fill
Our earth with light and grace;
Thou hid'st no dark and cruel will
Behind Thy smiling face!
Early life and work
John Greenleaf Whittier was born to John and Abigail (Hassey) at their rural homestead near Haverhill, Massachusetts on December 17, 1807.[1] He grew up on the farm in a household with his parents, a brother and two sisters, a maternal aunt and paternal uncle, and a constant flow of visitors and hired hands for the farm. Their farm was not very profitable. There was only enough money to get by. John himself was not cut out for hard farm labor and suffered from bad health and physical frailty his whole life. Although he received little formal education, he was an avid reader who studied his father’s six books on Quakerism until their teachings became the foundation of his ideology. Whittier was heavily influenced by the doctrines of his religion, particularly its stress on humanitarianism, compassion, and social responsibility.
Whittier was first introduced to poetry by a teacher. His sister sent his first poem, "The Exile's Departure", to the Newburyport Free Press without his permission and its editor, William Lloyd Garrison, published it on June 8, 1826.[2] As a boy, it was discovered that Whittier was color-blind when he was unable to see a difference between ripe and unripe strawberries.[3] Garrison as well as another local editor encouraged Whittier to attend the recently-opened Haverhill Academy. To raise money to attend the school, Whittier became a shoemaker for a time, and a deal was made to pay part of his tuition with food from the family farm.[4] Before his second term, he earned money to cover tuition by serving as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in what is now Merrimac, Massachusetts.[5] He attended Haverhill Academy from 1827 to 1828 and completed a high school education in only two terms.
Garrison gave Whittier the job of editor of the National Philanthropist, a Boston-based temperance weekly. Shortly after a change in management, Garrison reassigned him as editor of the weekly American Manufacturer in Boston.[6] Whittier became an out-spoken critic of President Andrew Jackson, and by 1830 was editor of the prominent New England Weekly Review in Hartford, Connecticut, the most influential Whig journal in New England. In 1833 he published The Song of the Vermonters, 1779, which he had anonymously inserted in The New England Magazine. The poem was erroneously attributed to Ethan Allen for nearly sixty years.
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