Books with title The Sly Spy

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*This Book is annotated (it contains a detailed biography of the author). *An active Table of Contents has been added by the publisher for a better customer experience. *This book has been checked and corrected for spelling errors.The Spy: a Tale of the Neutral Ground was James Fenimore Cooper's second novel, published in 1821. This was the earliest United States novel to win wide and permanent fame and may be said to have begun the type of romance which dominated U.S. fiction for 30 years.The action takes place during the American Revolution. The share of historical fact in the story is not large, but the action takes place so near to great events that the characters are all invested with something of the dusky light of heroes, while George Washington moves among them like an unsuspected god. The book is full of swelling rhetoric and the ardent national piety of Cooper's generation.The plot ranges back and forth over the neutral ground between the Continental and British armies with great haste and sweep. To rapid movement Cooper adds the merit of a very real setting. He knew Westchester County, New York, where he was then living, and its sparse legends as Walter Scott knew the Anglo-Scottish border. Thus, the topography of The Spy is drawn with a firm hand.Accepting for women the romantic ideals of the day, the heroines of the novel are cast in the conventional mold of helplessness and decorum. The less sheltered Betty Flanagan, no heroine at all in the elegant sense, is amusing and truthful. The gentlemen are little more than mere heroes, whatever the plain fellows may be. But Harvey Birch, peddler and patriot, his character remotely founded upon that of a real spy who had helped John Jay, is essentially memorable and arresting. Gaunt, weather-beaten, canny, mysterious, he prowls about on his subtle errands, pursued by friend and foe, sustained only by the confidence of Washington, serving a half supernatural spirit of patriotism which drives him to his destiny, at once wrecking and honoring him. This romantic fate also condemns him to be sad and lonely, a dedicated soul.

The Spy: a Tale of the Neutral Ground was James Fenimore Cooper's second novel, published in 1821 by Wiley & Halsted. This was the earliest American novel to win wide and permanent fame and may be said to have begun the type of romance which dominated U.S. fiction for 30 years.The action takes place during the American Revolution, at "The Locusts", which is believed to have been the real family home of John Jay in Rye, Westchester County, New York (known today as the Jay Estate). The plot ranges back and forth over the neutral ground between the British and Continental armies.Harvey Birch, a peddler, has a meeting with a Mr. Harper at The Locusts, the country home of a British sympathizer located between the lines. The peddler comes under suspicion for being a British spy in consequence, but he is really a patriot, as Mr. Harper is George Washington in disguise, with whom Birch has other meetings in the course of the book. Birch's role is revealed only after falling in battle.

James Fenimore Cooper was America's first successful popular novelist. Son of the prominent federalist William Cooper, founder of the Cooperstown settlement, James was educated at Yale in preparation for a genteel life as a federalist gentleman. After his father's death in an 1809 duel, Cooper quickly squandered his inheritance, and at thirty was on the verge of bankruptcy. He turned to writing but his first book, Precaution (1820), was a failure. It did, however, receive some favorable reviews and he decided to try again. In searching for another topic, he remembered the story of a spy, which had been related to him by John Jay years before. The surroundings of his home Westchester county, the debatable ground of both armies during almost the whole revolutionary period, furnished a convenient stage. The Spy was the result, and during the winter of 1821-22 the American public awoke to the fact that it possessed a novelist of its own. The success of this book, which was unprecedented at the time in the meager annals of American literature, determined Cooper's career and he went on to write more than fifty novels.

"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.