James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century whose historical romances depicting frontier and Native American life from the 17th-19th centuries created a unique form of American literature. He lived for much of his boyhood, and the last 15 years of his life, in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father. He was enrolled at Yale University aged 13 but, following a series of pranks, was expelled in his third year without completing his degree. In 1806 he found work as a sailor and at 17 joined the crew of a merchant vessel. By 1811 he had obtained the rank of midshipman in the fledgling US Navy, having married in January that year at 21. The Coopers had seven children, five of whom survived to adulthood. Having decided to try his hand at writing fiction, in 1820 he published his first novel, Precaution, anonymously. Whilst this first work was a tale of morals and manners, his second, The Spy (1821), was an action adventure centring on spying and skirmishing between US and British forces. It became the first bestseller at home and abroad to be written by an American, requiring several reprintings to satisfy demand. This success spurred him on to write The Pioneers (1823), the firstof his Leatherstocking series featuring an inter-racial friendship between Natty Bumppo, a resourceful American woodsman, and Chief Chingachgook of the Delaware Indians. Bumppo was also the hero of Cooper's most famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans (1826). Throughout his career Cooper published numerous social, political, and historical works of fiction and non-fiction with the objective of countering European prejudices and nurturing an original American art and culture, and he became one of the most popular 19th-century American authors, his work greatly admired worldwide. In The Crater, a Tale of the Pacific (1847), Cooper incorporated the knowledge of ship construction he had acquired while working as a US Navy midshipman in the 1810s. The novel's protagonist and role model, Mark Woolson, having survived the loss of his shipmates and embayment of his ship, goes on to thrive by his own industry. Following a volcanic upheaval that raises new land, he founds a thriving colony but the colonists must defend their new homes and possessions against natives who outnumber them and covet the new land.