The Spy

The Project BookishMall.com EBook of The Spy, by James Fenimore Cooper

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project BookishMall.com License included with this eBook or online at www.BookishMall.com.net

Title: The Spy

Author: James Fenimore Cooper

Posting Date: December 11, 2011 [EBook #9845] Release Date: February, 2006 First Posted: October 23, 2003

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT BookishMall.com EBOOK THE SPY ***

Produced by PG Distributed Proofreading Team

ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS

THE SPY

A TALE OF THE NEUTRAL GROUND

BY JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

EDITED BY

NATHANIEL WARING BARNES

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN DE PAUW UNIVERSITY GREENCASTLE, INDIANA

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

"I believe I could write a better story myself!" With these words, since become famous, James Fenimore Cooper laid aside the English novel which he was reading aloud to his wife. A few days later he submitted several pages of manuscript for her approval, and then settled down to the task of making good his boast. In November, 1820, he gave the public a novel in two volumes, entitled Precaution. But it was published anonymously, and dealt with English society in so much the same way as the average British novel of the time that its author was thought by many to be an Englishman. It had no originality and no real merit of any kind. Yet it was the means of inciting Cooper to another attempt. And this second novel made him famous.

When Precaution appeared, some of Cooper's friends protested against his weak dependence on British models. Their arguments stirred his patriotism, and he determined to write another novel, using thoroughly American material. Accordingly he turned to Westchester County, where he was then living, a county which had been the scene of much stirring action during a good part of the Revolutionary War, and composed The Spy—A Tale of the Neutral Ground. This novel was published in 1821, and was immediately popular, both in this country and in England. Soon it was translated into French, then into other foreign languages, until it was read more widely than any other tale of the century. Cooper had written the first American novel. He had also struck an original literary vein, and he had gained confidence in himself as a writer.

Following this pronounced success in authorship, Cooper set to work on a third book and continued for the remainder of his life to devote most of his time to writing. Altogether he wrote over thirty novels and as many more works of a miscellaneous character. But much of this writing has no interest for us at the present time, especially that which was occasioned by the many controversies in which the rather belligerent Cooper involved himself. His work of permanent value after The Spy falls into two groups, the tales of wilderness life and the sea tales. Both these groups grew directly out of his experiences in early life.

Cooper was born on September 15, 1789, in Burlington, New Jersey, but while still very young he was taken to Cooperstown, on the shores of Otsego Lake, in central New York. His father owned many thousand acres of primeval forest about this village, and so through the years of a free boyhood the young Cooper came to love the wilderness and to know the characters of border life. When the village school was no longer adequate, he went to study privately in Albany and later entered Yale College. But he was not interested in the study of books. When, as a junior, he was expelled from college, he turned to a career in the navy. Accordingly in the fall of 1806 he sailed on a merchant ship, the Sterling, and for the next eleven months saw hard service before the mast. Soon after this apprenticeship he received a commission as a midshipman in the United States navy. Although it was a time of peace, and he saw no actual fighting, he gained considerable knowledge from his service on Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain that he put to good use later. Shortly before his resignation in May, 1811, he had married, and for several years thereafter he lived along in a pleasant, leisurely fashion, part of the time in Cooperstown and part of the time in Westchester County, until almost accidentally he broke into the writing of his first novel. Aside from the publication of his books, Cooper's later life was essentially uneventful. He died at Cooperstown, on September 14, 1851.

The connection of Cooper's best writing with the life he knew at first hand is thus perfectly plain. In his novels dealing with the wilderness, popularly known as the Leatherstocking Tales, he drew directly on his knowledge of the backwoods and backwoodsmen as he gained it about Cooperstown. In The Pioneers (1823) he dealt with the scenes of his boyhood, scenes which lay very close to his heart; and in the other volumes of this series, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and _The Deerslayer (1841), he continued to write of the trappers and frontiersmen and outpost garrisons and Indians who made up the forest life he knew so well. Similarly, in the sea tales, which began with 'The Pilot'(1823) and 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.