Since I have just spent a year writing the sequel to Jane Austen’s Persuasion, I’ve understandably been pretty immersed in the novel and its characters. After all, it’s my favourite Austen novel. And I think it is fair to say that I’m not alone – it is a favourite with many Austen lovers. After all, who could not feel for Anne and Wentworth, and the struggle they make to find what they once lost? I can’t imagine anyone not loving this beautiful story! 

As in Austen’s novel, Precaution concerns itself with the matter of parental interference in courtship, In Cooper’s novel, this can come off at times as moralizing, whereas Austen’s novel was on the whole less didactic, less ‘preachy’. Austen seems to have overall rooted for the couple she writes of, and to argue for, as she termed it in Northanger Abbey, ‘filial disobedience’. She roots very much for Anne’s original inclinations as the ones which would have led to her happiness, and suggests that the regarding of ‘parental guidance’ in the form of Lady Russell’s advice, as leading to her unhappiness.

Conversely, Cooper’s counter-novel argues the opposite. His heroine, Emily, is rewarded for her ‘unvarying sense of duty’ which is her guidepost throughout Precaution. 

In any case, I still enjoyed reading Cooper’s novel very much, and found it entertaining and fascinating when read with the understanding of the motivation behind it, and especially knowing that Persuasion was likely the blueprint for his perhaps more moralistic version. This debut novel launched Cooper’s career as a writer and he went on to write several wonderful and intelligent novels for which he is more widely known, The Last of the Mohicans perhaps being his most well-known novel.

I will leave it to readers to get hold of a copy of Precaution and let us know once you make up your own minds as to which was the ‘better novel’. 

Sources:

Fenimore Cooper, James. Precaution. New York: A.T. Goodrich & Co., 1820.

Fenimore Cooper, Susan. ‘Introductions to Novels by James Fenimore Cooper.’ James Fenimore Cooper Website. 

Hastings, George E. "How Cooper Became a Novelist." American Literature, vol. 12, no. 1, 1940, pp. 20-51

Hello regency romance and Jane Austen fans! I have been making a start on my next JAFF novel (it is a sequel to Northanger Abbey!) and early in the novel I had to do some research for what would appear on a regency dinner table. Very popular in England at this time was something called, ‘white soup’. 

It appears in many novels and of course in many cookbooks of the time, and was apparently a staple dish on the regency table. Jane Austen herself mentions the delicacy in Pride and Prejudice as being prepared in large quantities for the ball at Netherfield. Joyce White in her regency blog mentions that it's making involved a large and expensive quantity of ingredients, and that its value lay in its colour; white foods (white flour, white sugar, etc) were considered things richer people only could afford and thus white foods, including white soup, was seen as a status indicator.