On his return from Europe in 1833 after an absence of seven years, Cooper endured a profound shock to his identity as a national writer. The outward symptoms were obvious: – a severe decline in sales, a decision – later revoked – to give up writing fiction, an inability to settle comfortably in New York, renewed financial difficulties, and finally the remove to Cooperstown in 1836. To his American contemporaries, Cooper may have seemed simply a novelist returning after too long an absence abroad, but in Cooper's mind he returned a more seasoned father, ready to receive filial respect. The full sting of Cooper's alienation originated in his disappointed expectations.

Cooper had left America with the accolades of his contemporaries, and in general his seven years in Europe supported his confidence as a father and writer. In Europe, his wife and five children had been dependent solely on him, and he had evidently taken satisfaction in arranging schools and personally guiding their peripatetic introduction to European life and arts. Among Europeans he had made friends with people of high standing whose interest confirmed his coveted role as an American spokesman. Among Americans abroad, he had cultivated both the artists and the first prosperous pioneers of the reverse migration studied by Henry James. The young sculptor Horatio Greenough had become a particularly close friend, and their frank letters suggest that Cooper had found in Europe support analogous to that he had found among his friends in the Bread and Cheese: a combination of friendship and barely stated deference to his seniority and established success.