The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spy, by J. Fenimore Cooper

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Title: The Spy
Condensed for use in schools

Author: J. Fenimore Cooper

Release Date: May 31, 2010 [EBook #32632]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_STANDARD LITERATURE SERIES_

THE SPY

BY

J. FENIMORE COOPER

CONDENSED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS

_WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND EXPLANATORY NOTES_

NEW YORK AND NEW ORLEANS
UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING CO.
1898

COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY
UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING CO.

Press of J. J. Little & Co.
Astor Place, New York

INTRODUCTION.

James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, N. J., in 1789--the year
in which George Washington was inaugurated first President of the
United States. His boyhood was passed at Cooperstown, N. Y., a village
founded by his father. After completing his studies at Yale, young
Cooper entered the American navy as midshipman, subsequently obtaining
the rank of lieutenant. He also made some voyages in a merchant
vessel, and in this service acquired that knowledge of sea life of
which he made good use in many of his novels.

Cooper has been styled the Walter Scott of America. It is hardly an
exaggeration to rank him so high, for he has done for America what
Scott did for Scotland: he has illustrated and popularized much of its
history and many of its olden traditions in stories that will have
appreciative readers so long as the English language is spoken. As a
recent writer observes, he "wrote for men and women as well as for
boys and girls," and the best of his stories are "purely American,
native born, and native bred."

Another distinction must be assigned to Cooper, and it is a mark of
high merit: he was the first American novelist who became widely known
and esteemed in foreign countries. "The Spy" appeared in 1821--a time
when American literature was in its infancy. Though but the second of
the author's works, it immediately became popular on both sides of the
Atlantic. It was translated into se