Note
{Introductory Note: “Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief” was James Fenimore Cooper’s first serious attempt at magazine writing, and Graham’s Magazine would publish other contributions from him over the next few years, notably a series of biographic sketches of American naval officers, and the novel “Jack Tier; or The Florida Reef” (1846-1848). Though hardly one of Cooper’s greatest works, “Autobiography” remains significant because of: (1) its unusual narrator—an embroidered pocket-handkerchief—that is surely the first of its kind; (2) its critique of economic exploitation in France and of the crass commercial climate of ante-bellum America; and, (3) its constant exploration of American social, moral, and cultural issues. This said, it must be admitted that the telling of Adrienne’s sad plight in Paris becomes a bit overwrought; and that the inept wooing of Mary Monson by the social cad Tom Thurston is so drawn out and sarcastic as to suggest snobbery on Cooper’s part as well as on that of his elite hanky. Finally, the heroine-handkerchief’s protracted failure to recognize her maker, when she has proved so sensitive to her surroundings in every other fashion, is simply unbelievable. Still, there is enough to reward today’s reader, if only in the story’s unique “point of view” and in the recognizable foibles of Henry Halfacre and his social-climbing daughter.}
{I have annotated the edition—identified by {curly brackets}—to translate most of the French words and expressions which Cooper frequently employs, to define occasional now-obsolete English words, and to identify historical names and other references. Cooper frequently alludes, in the beginning of the work, to events and persons involved in the French Revolution of 1830, which he had witnessed while living in Paris, and about which the beginning of the plot revolves.}