Last of the Mohicans Lesson Plan

James Fenimore Cooper is considered America's first great novelist. Despite this distinction, Cooper had no specific literary aspirations while growing up. Born to upper-class parents in 1789, he was the second youngest with eleven other brothers and sisters. Cooper spent his childhood in the rural settlement of Cooperstown in upstate New York. At the age of fourteen he attended Yale College, but despite being a gifted Latin student he was expelled for misconduct at the age of sixteen. Shortly afterwards he joined the Navy until his father's death in 1809. With a sizable inheritance, Cooper married Susan Augusta De Lancey, left the navy, and became a gentleman farmer and frequenter of...