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Cooper was raised near Otsego Lake in central New York, where
his father owned a large property known as Cooperstown. At
the age of twenty he inherited his father's fortune and married
Susan De Lancy. Soon to become America's first successful
novelist, Cooper wrote his first book in 1820 to prove to
his wife that he could write a better novel than one they
had been reading together. Though not an auspicious start,
this novel, Precaution, was followed by The Spy
(1821) and then by his breakthrough novel The Pioneers
(1823), the first of five Natty Bumppo books known as
the Leather-Stocking Tales. The popularity of the
Leather-Stocking Tales -- all historical romances
set in America -- gave Cooper the epithet "The American
Scott," and Natty Bumppo, the aged hunter, would become
an icon in American literature and culture. The other Leather-Stocking
Tales are Last of the Mohicans (1826), The
Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The
Deerslayer (1841).
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