included 'The Red Rover'(1828), 'The Two Admirals' (1842) and 'The
Wing-and-Wing'(1842), he made full use of his experiences before the
mast and in the navy. The nautical accuracy of these tales of the sea
could scarcely have been attained by a "landlubber". It has much
practical significance, then, that Cooper chose material which he knew
intimately and which gripped his own interest. His success came like
Thackeray's and Stevenson's and Mark Twain's--without his having to
reach to the other side of the world after his material.

In considering Cooper's work as a novelist, nothing is more marked than
his originality. In these days we take novels based on American history
and novels of the sea for granted, but at the time when Cooper published
'The Spy' and 'The Pilot' neither an American novel nor a salt-water
novel had ever been written. So far as Americans before Cooper had
written fiction at all, Washington Irving had been the only one to cease
from a timid imitation of British models. But Irving's material was
local, rather than national. It was Cooper who first told the story of
the conquest of the American continent. He caught the poetry and the
romantic thrill of both the American forest and the sea; he dared to
break away from literary conventions. His reward was an immediate and
widespread success, together with a secure place in the history of his
country's literature.

There was probably a two-fold reason for the success which Cooper's
novels won at home and abroad. In the first place, Cooper could invent a
good story and tell it well. He was a master of rapid, stirring
narrative, and his tales were elemental, not deep or subtle. Secondly,
he created interesting characters who had the restless energy, the
passion for adventure, the rugged confidence, of our American pioneers.
First among these great characters came Harvey Birch in 'The Spy', but