• Washington Irving
  James Fenimore Cooper
  

• American Literature

• Washington Irving (1783-1859)

• the youngest of eleven children of a prosperous New York merchant

• read widely at home and was greatly influenced by the literary interests of his brothers, who enjoyed writing poems and essays

• studied law at private schools, but without much interest; already in 1802 he began to contribute satirical essays and sketches to New York newspapers

• The Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent., won him his earliest literary recognition.

• After serving in several law offices and travelling in Europe, he turned seriously to literature

• Salmagundi, or, the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq., and Others, a series of satirical miscellanies on New York society (satirical essays and poems)

• A History of New York (1809)
  written by the Dutch-American scholar Diedrich Knickerbocker
  a satirical account of New York State during the period of Dutch occupation (1609-1664)

• In 1815 Irving went to England

• Thomas Campbell, Sir Walter Scott, and Thomas Moore

• The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-1820)

• From 1826 until 1829 Irving was a member of the United States legation in Madrid

• History of Christopher Columbus (1828)

• The Alhambra (1832)

• In 1832, after an absence that lasted 17 years, he returned to the United States

• Irving traveled to the American West and wrote several books using the West as their setting:

• A Tour on the Prairies (1835),

• Astoria (1836),

• The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A. (1837).

• in 1846 settled at Sunnyside, his country
  home near Tarrytown, New York

• Irving's other works include
  Bracebridge Hall (1822)
  Tales of a Traveller (1824)
  A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829)
  Oliver Goldsmith (1849)
  Life of Washington (5 volumes, 1855-1859).

• James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

• Born in BurlingtonNew Jersey,

• Cooper grew up in Cooperstown, a central New York State town founded by his father.

• Much of Cooper's knowledge of the forest and Native Americans was gathered firsthand during his boyhood in a region still very much a wilderness.

• Cooper served as a sailor in the merchant marine and as a midshipman in the United States Navy.

• Precaution (1820)
  a conventional novel of English manners

• The Spy (1821)
  a novel about the American Revolution

• The Pioneers (1823)

• The Last of the Mohicans (1826),

• The Prairie (1827),

• The Pathfinder (1840),

• The Deerslayer (1841)

• Natty Bumppo embodies the conflict between preserving nature unspoiled and developing the land in the name of progress,

• a white frontiersman with ties to the settlers who spends much of his time in the wilderness with Native Americans,

• positioned between two modes of living.

• sea tales:

• The Pilot (1823)

• The Red Rover (1827)

• The Water Witch (1830)

• the settlement novels:

• The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829)

• Wyandotte (1841)

• The Crater (1847), first allegorical novel
  in Europe from 1826 to 1833

• The Bravo (1831),

• The Heidenmauer (1832)

• The Headsman (1833),

• a trilogy intended to portray the feudalism of medieval Europe

• A Letter to His Countrymen (1834)

• social criticism, conservative attitude toward democracy

• The satire The Monikins (1835)

• The American Democrat (1838)

• Gleanings in Europe (1837-1838)

• describing his travels abroad

• some volumes of naval history

• Cooperstown 1860

• Cooperstown 1867

• the Littlepage Manuscripts

• the trilogy known as the Littlepage Manuscripts:

• Satanstoe (1845),

• The Chainbearer (1845),

• The Redskins (1846)

• the story of several generations of a New York State family

• landed wealth against the new aristocracy based on industry and finance

---