James Fenimore Cooper: Two Novels Of The American Revolution

Meer over het boek

With his second novel, The Spy: A Tale of The Neutral Ground, published in 1821, James Fenimore Cooper found his true voice and his most enduring subject matter: the history of his young nation, born of the clash between Old World and New. Eager to prove that "American manners and American scenes" could be a rich field for fiction, Cooper turned to the American Revolution as a backdrop for homegrown historical romances in the mode of Walter Scott's Waverley novels. It was a winning formula: The Spy quickly became America's first great best seller. Long praised for its historical accuracy, Lionel Lincoln; or, The Leaguer of Boston (1825) is the suspenseful story of a native-born American serving in the British Army. It is set against a carefully researched panorama of the coming of the Revolution in and around Boston, complete with vivid depictions of the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill. Once again, issues of divided loyalty come into play: "Cooper was sensitive to the moral ambiguities of a war many wanted simply to celebrate," writes acclaimed historian Alan Taylor in his introduction, "and with the voices of the Revolutionary generation falling silent, he understood that fiction could reveal these uncertainties with a force and immediacy that no other medium could match." --Publisher description