{"id":52846,"date":"2011-12-23T08:05:26","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T13:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=52846"},"modified":"2012-01-03T11:28:25","modified_gmt":"2012-01-03T16:28:25","slug":"the-entrepreneurial-james-fenimore-cooper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/12\/the-entrepreneurial-james-fenimore-cooper\/","title":{"rendered":"The Entrepreneurial James Fenimore Cooper"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Professor<\/a>
Professor of English Wayne Franklin. (Daniel Buttrey\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When James Fenimore Cooper decided he could write better books than he was reading, he had a major problem: he had to assume the risks for publishing his own novels.<\/p>\n

Cooper, the author of The Last of the Mohicans, <\/em>who began writing in 1820 at the age of 30, <\/em>soon <\/em>was collecting thousands of dollars not only from book sales but also from the sale of rights to the books to French, British, and German publishers. The great American novel \u2013 and a publishing business \u2013 was born.<\/p>\n

\u201cCooper was immensely successful, and one of the exceptions that really count in literary history,\u201d says Wayne Franklin, professor and head of the English department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n

Franklin, the author of James Fenimore Cooper: A Literary Life, Vol. I<\/em><\/a> (Yale University Press, 2007), will soon complete work on a second volume about Cooper\u2019s work. He has found Cooper fascinating not only for his novels, including the popular Leatherstocking Tales,<\/em> but also because he illustrates the history of the book in the early United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was really no publishing industry for novels,\u201d Franklin says. \u201cHe had to manage his career and assume the risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Franklin\u2019s interest in the history of the book as well as in writing mirror the goals of the English department, where the interconnectivity of reading and writing are stressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe teach everything from how to read and write to how to understand the larger context of written communication to how to understand the role of language in human thought,\u201d says Franklin, \u201cand how to create literature as well as appreciate it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

English professor Wayne Franklin is writing his second book about Cooper, who was successful in business as well as in writing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":52470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-52846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-20 01:49:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52846"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53080,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52846\/revisions\/53080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/52470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52846"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=52846"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=52846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}