Description:

Cooper James

James Fenimore Cooper endorsed check, PSA/DNA slabbed

 

Unnumbered check issued from Cooperstown, New York on August 14, 1840 in the amount of $10 payable to “self”, inscribed overall and signed J. Fenimore Cooper on the payee line. The partly printed check issued from Otsego County Bank bears a red stamp near the center partly touching the signature. Decorated by a looping braid and an eagle bearing an olive branch at left. Graded by PSA/DNA as “NM-MT 8”. The check measuring 5.875” x 2.25” is enclosed in a PSA/DNA certified slab measuring 9.5” x 4.5”.

 

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) is widely recognized as America’s first major novelist. His father William helped found the settlement in upstate New York that now bears his name, the same “Cooperstown” that also appears on our check. By all accounts, Cooper was a bright and vivacious young scholar. He attended Yale University prior to his expulsion for a prank. After serving as a navy midshipman, Cooper married and enjoyed a level of financial independence that allowed him to pursue leisure activities, including writing.

 

Initially, Cooper modeled his works directly on or in opposition to acknowledged British novelists like Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen. Yet as he gained in confidence, Cooper began to explore aspects of the newly forged American identity, including character types, settings, and situations. His Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels that span the lifetime of their hero, Hawkeye, or Natty Bumppo, were released over a 20-year period, between 1823 and 1841. In these works, Cooper examined the concepts of the frontier, progress, and the “noble savage”.

 

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