Quote by Carl Clinton Van Doren
IT is mere coincidence that Cooper was born in the year which produced The Power of Sympathy and that when he died Uncle Tom's Cabin was passing through its serial stage, and yet the limits of his life mark almost exactly the first great period of American fiction.
Summary
This quote suggests that the birth and death of the American writer James Fenimore Cooper coincided with two significant milestones in American fiction. It states that it was purely coincidental that Cooper was born in the same year that The Power of Sympathy, one of the earliest American novels, was published. Likewise, it remarks that Cooper's death occurred during the serialization of Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel that is often considered a powerful force in shaping American literature. Overall, this quote stresses the chronological significance of Cooper's lifespan in relation to the development of American fiction.