James Fenimore Cooper was inspired by a tale related to him by neighbor and family friend John Jay. It was more successful and became a bestseller; the setting of this Revolutionary War tale is widely believed to have been John Jay's family home "The Locusts" in Rye, New York. In 1823, Cooper published "The Pioneers", the first of the "Leatherstocking" series. The series features Natty Bumppo, a resourceful American woodsman at home with the Delaware Indians and their chief Chingachgook. Bumppo was also the main character of Cooper's most famous novel "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826), written in New York City where
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" is an 1895 essay by Mark Twain, written as a satire and criticism of the writings of James Fenimore Cooper. Drawing on examples from "The Deerslayer" and "The Pathfinder" from Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, the essay claims Cooper is guilty of verbose writing, poor plotting, glaring inconsistencies, overused clichés, cardboard characterizations, and a host of similar "offenses". The essay is characteristic of Twain's biting, derisive and highly satirical style of literary criticism, a form he also used to deride such authors as Oliver Goldsmith, George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Twain