At 17, completed his formal education, prepared for bar examination,
At 21, traveled to Europe. When he returned, the law firm held no appeal to him. But he fell in love with the daughter(aged 14) of the director of the law firm. So he remained to work diligently in order to marry her. In 1808, two months after an illness, she died. All of his plans, hopes, dreams were gone. He found existence almost unbearable without her companionship. He was not married all his life.
Works
A History of New York (纽约外史)
(1) his first book, and was a great success, won him wide popularity.
(2) a humorous handbook on the sight of New York city. It is not really concerned with the history of New York. Depicting the foolishness, self-assertiveness and simplicity of the Dutch settlers, he showed his fondness for them, and made a contrast between their kindness and British savageries.
The Sketch Book(见闻札记)
A collection, include two famous short stories:
Rip Van Winkle(瑞普.凡.温克尔)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (睡谷的传奇)
The publication marked the beginning of American Romanticism.
Rip Van Winkle
Outline
Rip, the idler, good-natured, hen-packed man(having a domineering wife and was criticized and scolded by her all the time). He does everything except take care of his own farm and family, helps everybody except his wife and his own folks, he is welcomed everywhere except at home. His wife does not leave him in peace. She keeps scolding him about his idleness, carelessness and the ruin he is bringing to his family. Unable to stay happy at home, he finds refuge in the mountain, with his dog and gun as his companion. One afternoon, he stays out late and meets a group of odd-looking people playing games. He drinks their drinks and falls asleep. When he wakes up, he find his dog has gone, his gun rusted, his beard grows a foot long. Returning to his village, he finds it has changed beyond recognition: his old house vanished, some of his old friend (his wife) died. There is a flag of stars and stripes moving about in front of the former inn. He has slept 20 years, and the Revolution is over. He finds it difficult to communicate with the present world and feels unhappy. He does not know who he is, because his own son takes his name.
Comment:
A. Rip serves as a stereotype of American male as seen from abroad: a jolly over-grown child, or the man-boy American who never grows up, or the new world innocent who yearns for freedom from work and responsibility.
B. To some extent, it reveals the conservative attitude of the author. Because the change that occurred in the 20 years was not always for the better for him. E.g., before the war, there had been peace and harmony. Now there came struggling for power between parties everywhere. The tempo of life quickened. Pre-war leisurely existence is replaced by a busy, bustling life. Change and revolution upset the natural order of things. It can be taken as an illustration of the fact that Irving never seemed to accept a modern democratic America.
C. The town itself is symbol of America－ forever and rapidly changing. The conflicts and dreams are those of the nation－ the conflict of innocence and experience, work and leisure, the old and the new.
     The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Outline
Sleepy Hollow is a remote, tranquil and superstitious village. They believed that there is a horseman without a head. Icabod Crane comes here to be country schoolmaster, and later falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy Dutch farmer, but he has many rivals in love. One night, when he returns from a party, he meets the headless horseman, and is frightened almost to death. The next morning, he hurries back to town, and one of his rivals, Brom Bones, gets married with the girl. Villagers believe that it is the boy who disguises himself as the horseman.
Comment
1. It is an amusing tale about the conflict between Icabod and Brom. Icabod is a bookworm and has the supposed traits such as frailty and cowardice. Brom is unthinking and rough but not without his cleverness and mischief. The contrast seems to point toward a conflict between pretentious intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. Neither wins the heart of the readers, but brom wins the girl.
2. The writer tries to reveal the superiority of the serene village over the noisy modern citied. He described the bumper harvest in lively and light words. The schoolmaster was described vividly. With his shrewdness, self-assertiveness and cowardice, he is described as an interloper, a destructive force. In the end, he is driven away from where he does not belong., and the serene village remains permanently good and happy.
James Cooper (1789-1851)
Life story
Works
The Spy(间谍)
It is a novel about American Revolution, and proved to be a great success.
Leatherstocking Tales (皮袜子系列)
 a series of 5 novels, about the frontier life of American settlers, about the whole life of a hunter- Natty Bumpoo.(he was so named because he was wearing leather leggings in the American Indian fashion).Represented by “The Pioneers”, it was probably the first true romance of the frontier in American literature. So Cooper was generally regarded as the first writers who hit upon national subjects.
Deerslayer(打鹿将): the hunting life of the young Leatherstocking in the uncultivated forest and his relationship with the Indians.
Pathfinder(探路者)   The Last of the Mohigan(最后的莫西干人). His adventures when French and British were fighting with each other.
Prairie(草原) Landless farmer pushed frontier further west, and old leatherstocking died on the prarier.
The Pioneers (1823)(先驱者)
A romantic story of life in upstate NewYork ten years after the Revolution.
Leatherstocking is innocent, simple, honest and generous. He insists on man’s old forest freedom, on his rights to shoot on the hill. But after the revolution, laws of forbidden shooting were made, in the novel, by Judge Temple, another character in the novel. Judge Temple insists that man without law and order remains savage. Leatherstocking finds it difficult to accept the laws. To him, the forest is good and pure. There is freedom not fettered by any forms of human institutions. So in his mind, the adventure into the new world has not produced an ideal social order, the civilization the white settlers imposed on the wilderness is poisoned at the root from the very beginning. At the end of the story, the hunter is seen walking slowly towards the forest, with the rifle over his shoulder.
Comment
(1). Leatherstocking embodies   the idea of brotherhood of man
                                     nature and freedom
 and he must face contradiction- between freedom and law, between individual liberty and social restrictions, between the wilderness and civilization. He is an embodiment of human virtues.
  Judge Temple represent  civilization and law
He is also a man of honor and integrity
Both of them are pioneers.
Chapter Four
American Transcendentalism
In1936，with the publication of a little book entitled Nature, American Romanticism was pushed into a new phase, the phase of New England transcendentalism, the summit of American Romanticism.
Features
1. It placed emphasis on spirit, or the oversoul as the most important thing in the universe. The oversoul existed in nature and man and constituted the chief element of the universe. This represented a new way of looking at the world. In the 18th C, it was generally held that the world was made of matter. It was against the popular tendency to get ahead in world affairs to the neglect of spiritual welfare.