Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief
by James Fenimore Cooper 1789–1851
The book, and the century it came out of.
A handkerchief narrates its own life — from the flax field in Picardy, through a Paris workroom where a girl embroiders it into a fortune, to New York, where it is bought by people who need to be seen with it. Cooper was thrown out of Yale for a prank with gunpowder and wrote his first novel on a bet with his wife; this 1843 satire on American snobbery is the strangest thing in his shelf, and it is very sharp about money. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Kruseman, Gérard and Newton among them.
Certain moral philosophers, with a due disdain of the flimsy foundations of human pride, have shown that every man is equally descended from a million of ancestors, within a given number of generations; thereby demonstrating that no prince exists who does not participate in the blood of some beggar, or any beggar who…
Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief, by James Fenimore Cooper, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Literary Classics
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 160 pages
- Reading time
- about 3 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785501351677
60 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Literary Classics shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785501351677, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. James Fenimore Cooper's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 160 pages, which is roughly about 3 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
