Which American Romantic novelist wrote 'The Last of the Mohicans'?

James Fenimore Cooper wrote the American Romantic novel “The Last of the Mohicans.”

Published in 1826, the novel is set in 1757 during the French and Indian War, the North American theater of the wider Seven Years’ War. It follows characters including Hawkeye, Chingachgook, Uncas, and the Munro sisters amid the siege and aftermath of Fort William Henry. The book is the second published novel in Cooper’s five-part Leatherstocking Tales.

Cooper reportedly developed the idea after visiting the Adirondack region and Lake George in 1825. He used frontier landscapes, historical conflict, and idealized Indigenous and settler characters to create a vividly American form of historical romance. The novel’s popularity helped make Cooper one of the most important early American novelists, although later readers and critics have challenged its stereotypes and its treatment of Native American cultures.

The title also created a lasting cultural phrase: “the last of the Mohicans” now describes the sole survivor of a disappearing group or tradition. Another common mix-up concerns the 1992 film starring Daniel Day-Lewis. That film is an adaptation of Cooper’s novel, not the original work itself, and it substantially reshapes the story and characters.