The Student Companion to James Fenimore Cooper At the dawn of America's continental empire, James Fenimore Cooper in the early 1800s became the new nation's first major novelist, inaugurating a great period in American literature and bequeathing a number of classic texts including the Leather-Stocking Tales. This "Companion" to Cooper's writings appeals to high school and college students by outlining Cooper's most frequently assigned novels and establishing their historical backgrounds concerning American Indians and the early United States. Two opening chapters review the author's life...