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Washington 1rving introduced the genre of a short story. Most of his stories have humorous character. He was a son of a Scottish merchant, who emigrated to America. He started as a merchant but then gave it up for diplomacy & literature. He spent about 20 years in Europe (England, Spain) as a diplomat & did a lot of strengthen the relations between the countries. His first literary works were based on European reality, yet he was the first American writer to make use of American actualities as well as American folklore of the peoples, inhabiting America, as the basis for his works.
He was also a publicist & edited a humorous almanac "Sulmagundi" (1807-1808) (this word means a salad made of many different ingredients), the name reflected the many – sided character of (the almanac: stories, anecdotes, jokes, etc. In the form of letters written by an Arab a fictitious personage) it described his impressions of the life in America.
In his book "A History of New York" (1809) the author depicted the extermination of the Indians in a satirical way. He also published several collections of short stories: “Tales of a Traveller” (1824), “The Scatch Book of Geoffery Cranyon, Gent” (1819-1820) (Geoffrerey Crayon was Irving’s pseudonym). But his most famous stories (anthology stories) are:
— "Rip Van Wink1e" (a story from ''The Sketch Book") a story, in which the main character sleeps for 20 years & having woken finds everything clhanged (the colonies are independent, etc ).
— “The Legend of the the Sleepy Hollow" a story about two rivals who loved one school teacher;
— "'The Devil and Tom Walker" a story about a married couple. The wife was very domineering. Her husband was a poor man. He met a strange creature & became a successful money lender. In general the theme of the deal with the Devil was very common of'romantic literature.
Actually Irving was the father of the American Romanticism & the first American writer who was recognized by Europe as the first representative of America's national literature.
James Fenimore Cooper was a son of a prosperous landholder in the state of New York. He studied at Elle University but did not graduate from it. His father sent him to sea & this sea experience turned out to be very useful when he started writing novels. His private life was not very successful: he fell in love with a girl in his youth but she tragically died; later he fell in love with Mary Shelley (the author of "Frankenstein") but she rejected his proposal.
He was a very prolific writer. All in all he wrote 32 novels, about 10 volumes of travel-notes, several books of publicism, His first novel was "Precaution” (1820). He consciously became a novel writer as he did not want to compete with Irving (in writing short stories) while novel writing remained an open field at that time. There were no novelists of note. And his first novels brought him immediate success & when he decided to visit Europe he was seen off as an ambassador of American literature & American hopes in Europe. There he enthusiastically supported the revolutionary ideas & prided himself on American democracy. Yet when he came back to America 6 years later, he realizes that he reality was different from the ideal which he had drawn for himself. He was disgusted with the money rubbing instinct with which his countrymen were overwhelmed. He was shocked by the new facts of extermination of the Indians. He began to expose American vices in his numerous pamphlets which brought public censure on him. He was criticized & oslracized & lived in poverty, His best known novels are:
— "The Spy" (1825) a historical novel. According to Cooper's words he wrote a novel with an American setting & love to his Motherland. And indeed here is the main theme of the story about the period of the American War of Independence & the life slory of the protagonist Harvey Birch, whose life is full of adventure & mystery. Harvey Birch is a spy in the American Army but to cover up his activities he has to play a double-role in a double-game & to act as an English spy as well. The writer endows his hero with superpowers: unbelievable courage, coolness, discretion & ability to foresee the future (clairvoyance). Unlike others he struggles for the freedom of his country;
— the pentalogy "Leather-Stocking Tales":"The Pioneers" (1823); "The Last of the Mohicans" (I826); "The Prairie" (1827); The Pathfinder" (1840); "The Deerslayer” (1841).
The penlalogy is named after the main hero Natty Bumppo. He has different names: Leather Stocking,
Hawk Eye, etc. He is very brave, very resourceful. He is a white man, a frontiersman, Natty struggles against any injustice, against chaotic ungoverned laceration of nature, against extermination of the Indians. Protesting against all these vices, he lives far from big cities, in woods or prairies. The Indians to whom he is spiritually close are his friends & he does his best to withstand their extermination. When he is old he dies in one of their tribes. Natty Bumppo was the first positive character in American literature that embodied the first features of American people: courage, justice, readiness to help the others, etc. The pentalogy covers a long period - about 50 years of his life & people around him. Thus it has all the features of the American historical novel, too, As a result Cooper was called "the American Waller Scott", though Cooper himself resented it because it gave him a secondary place after W. Scott. Cooper was more highly estimated in Europe than in America. George Sand used to say that together with B. Franklin & G. Washington Cooper was one of the three greatest men in America.
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