VITA
The author of this dissertation, Ernest E. Leisy, was born on a farm near Mound Ridge, Kansas, December 22, 1887. He was graduated from the two-year course of the Mound Ridge High School in 1906, taught public school the following year, attended Bethel College Academy at Newton, Kansas, from which he was graduated in 1909, taught public school in 1910–11, attended the University of Kansas, receiving his bachelor’s degree from this institution in 1913. He received a University Scholarship at Harvard where he did graduate work in English in 1913–14. From 1914 to 1918 he was Professor of English at Bethel College, Newton, Kansas, taking out one year, however, for graduate work in English at the University of Chicago, from which institution he received his Master’s degree. Since 1918 he has been an Instructor in English at the University of Illinois, devoting his spare time to study toward the doctor’s degree. He has published reviews in several journals and a short article in Modern Language Notes, but nothing of importance.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Any discussion of Cooper must go back to Lounsbury, T. R. James Fenimore Cooper, American Men of Letters series, Boston, 1883. W. B. Clymer’s Cooper is mainly an abridgment of Lounsbury. James Fenimore Cooper (1913) by Mary E. Philips supplies anecdotal information and pictures.
[2] Correspondence of James Fenimore Cooper. Edited by his Grandson, James Fenimore Cooper. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1922.
[3] Brownell, W. C. American Prose Masters, New York, 1909, p. 18.
[4] How little encouragement was held out is best related by himself: “So little was expected from the publication of an original work of this description, at the time that it was written, that the first volume of The Spy was actually printed several months before the author felt a sufficient inducement to write a line of the second.... As the second volume was slowly printing, from manuscript that was barely dry when it went into the compositor’s hands, the publisher intimated that the work might grow to a length that would consume the profits. To set his mind at rest, the last chapter was actually written, printed, and paged, several weeks before the chapters which preceded it were even thought of.”
[5] Loshe, L. D. The Early American Novel, New York, 1907, pp. 83–84.
[6] See Riverside edition, p. 21. “The recent fate of Andre has created much irritation on both sides.” Cf. also pp. 68, 208, 298, 301.
[7] Brownell, W. C. op. cit., p. 14.