The Two Admirals: A Tale (Writings of James Fenimore Cooper) - Softcover

Cooper, James Fenimore

Softcover

ISBN 10: 088706907X ISBN 13: 9780887069079

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1990

Synopsis

Author of the first scholarly history of the United States Navy, James Fenimore Cooper had long hoped to commemorate the American Navy by representing its fleet in action. Since no such fleet existed in 1841, he reverted to the Jacobite War of 1745 when the great British and French fleets contested in the English Channel and the colonial and British fleets were one.

Ever the experimenter in fiction, Cooper achieved a metaphysical dimension by assigning personal attributes to the ships in combat, and he also implicitly recalled his long friendship with Commodore William Branford Shubrick (much later, Rear Admiral Shubrick) in the story of the friendship between his two admirals—Oates and Bluewater—of the British Navy. The result is an intriguingly realistic romance.

About this title

Review

"In outline, The Two Admirals...is as romantic as The Pilot or Red Rover...The details, however, are in large part solid and real, and events are so handled that they raise philosophical questions--the more interesting because Cooper keeps personally aloof and neither asks nor answers them directly--about the notion of legitimacy in government and the conventions of loyalty and obedience." -- James Grossman, James Fenimore Cooper (William Sloane Associates, The American Men of Letters Series, pp. 157-58).

About the Author

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was a famed nineteenth century American author known for his work in fiction particularly sea stories and historical novels and politics. He enrolled in Yale University, never earned a degree but later joined the United States Navy. Some of his most famous works include Last of the Mohicans, A Letter to my Countymen, and Ned Myers' or A Life before the Mast.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 088706907X
• ISBN 13: 9780887069079
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 511