Description:

An original manuscript page from James Fennimore Cooper's final work of fiction, the 1833 novel, The Headsman

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851) Autograph Manuscript, 2 pages, 9.5" x 14.25", [Paris, c. 1832-1833], a pair of draft pages of his 1833 novel, The Headsman, or the Abbaye of Vigneron, published just before he returned to the United States following an eight year sojourn in Paris. Moderate toning and dampstains, minor losses at corners and marginal tears expertly repaired and in-filled, else very good condition. Together with a partly-printed, Document Signed, "J. Fenimore Cooper," Cooperstown, February 4, 1840, a check, filled out in his hand, drawn on the Ostego County Bank, payable to " self," for the amount of $20. Red cancellation stamp only affects two letters in signature, else fine.



Cooper's 1933 novel about the political and emotional consequences of the hereditary position of the " headsman", or public executioner, takes place in the 18th century near the Swiss-Italian border. The present manuscript, which covers the content found from pages 159 to 166 of the 1833 Paris edition, contains a conversation between the future baroness Adelheid de Willading and the commoner Sigismund Steinbach, the son of the current headsman. Adelheid and Sigismund wish to defy " the system" and marry each other.



This was the last of several works Cooper completed and published during his eight-year stay in France. While he was ostensibly employed as the United States Consul at Lyons, he resided mainly in Paris. Cooper derived inspiration for the novel's setting from several extended trips to Switzerland undertaken between 1828 and 1832. The Headsman would be his final work of fiction—upon his return from Europe, he produced primary political and historical works including a two-volume travelogue, Sketches of Switzerland (1836).



Constance Ayers Denne, in a 1974 article characterized Cooper's novel as a " genuine 'literary work of art.'" She explained that " a close scrutiny of this novel reveals a coherent unity at the heart of its structural complexity." While at its heart, The Headsman is a sociopolitical critique, Denne noted that " in wholeness of conception reveals not only Cooper's artistry but also much about his method of creation." (Denne, "Cooper's Artistry in the Headsman," Nineteenth-Century Fiction 29:1, June 1974, p. 77)

Some have theorized that the basis of The Headsman was loosely based on the 1831 novel Jésus-Christ en Flandres by Honoré de Balzac. While Balzac himself credited Cooper's writing as an inspiration of his own work, there is no evidence that Cooper was personally acquainted with the output of the French author—though he was fluent enough in French to read him. (Thomas R. Palfrey, "Cooper and Balzac: The Headsman," Modern Philology, 29, Feb. 1932, p. 335) Balzac had become acquainted with Cooper's work when the American author's works became popular in France in the 1820s. Works such as The Spy and Last of the Mohicans became wildly popular there after they were translated into French. Balzac summarized it best when he said, "Cooper a été bien compris, il a été surtout apprécié par la France" (" Cooper was understood, it was mostly enjoyed by France." ) That popularity was only magnified during his residence in France beginning in 1826: " He was lionized from within a few weeks after his first arrival" in Paris, "Later, he presided at meetings and banquets and was undoubtedly a figure...among the cultured." (E. Preston Dargan, "Balzac and Cooper: Les Chouans," Modern Philology, 1915, pp. 1-3)



A similar manuscript leaf from the same work fetched $6,250 at Christies in 2012.

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