"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.
