Vincent, L. H. American Literary Masters. 1906.
Wilson, J. G. Cooper Memorials and Memories. The Independent, January 31, 1901.
TOPICS AND PROBLEMS
Read Brownell’s defense of Cooper’s Indian characters in his “Masters of American Prose” and check his statements by your own observations in a selected novel.
Read the comments of Brownell in “American Prose Masters,” and of Lounsbury in the A. M. L. Series, on Cooper’s women, and then arrive at your own conclusions from the reading of a selected novel.
If you have read two or three of Cooper’s novels, see if he has introduced his usual polished gentleman and his bore or pedant in each, and see how nearly these characters correspond in themselves and in their story value.
Make a study of the actual plot and its development in any selected novel of Cooper’s.
Read Mark Twain’s essay on “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” and decide on how far it is fair and how far it was dictated by Mark Twain’s hostility to romantic fiction.
Read Cooper’s prefaces to a half-dozen or more novels for the light they will throw on his belligerency of temper.
Read “Home as Found” for comparison of the topics treated with those in the “Salmagundi” and “Croaker” papers, for observation on the variety of American weaknesses presented, for a decision as to how fundamental or how superficial these weaknesses were, and for a conclusion as to the amount of evident ill temper in the book.