James Fenimore Cooper 
The Water-Witch 
Or, The Skimmer of the Seas

Chiefly set on the waters and islands of New York Harbor in the early years of the 1700s, James Fenimore Cooper’s novel
The Water-Witch (1830) paints a vivid picture of life in the little colonial port. It was familiar territory for Cooper, who a century later had served as a junior officer on board an eighteen-gun sloop-of-war stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That experience acquainted him with the navigational intricacies and dangers with which his characters must deal as they carry out the central action of the novel, the repeated attempts by a British naval cruiser to capture the brigantine commanded by a notorious smuggler known as the Skimmer of the Seas. As in all of Cooper’s nautical novels, the scenes of ship-handling and naval combat in
The Water-Witch are rendered with absolute authenticity, but here he envelops them in a cloud of mystery and magic that is dispersed only in the chaotic climax of the book. This scholarly edition includes an informative historical introduction and thorough explanatory notes. It also serves as an example of the processes by which an authoritative text is established.




The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper



The distinguished Cooper scholar James Franklin Beard (1919–1989) began organizing the Writings of James Fenimore Cooper in the late 1960s, as his work on publishing the monumental Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper came to fulfillment. Beard’s intention was to provide readers with sound scholarly editions of Cooper’s major works, based wherever possible on authorial manuscripts. To date, the Writings of James Fenimore Cooper has made available texts of many of Cooper’s best-known novels, as well as some of his most important works of political and social commentary.

Table of Content

Acknowledgments



Historical Introduction



Illustrations



Preface [1830]



Preface [1834]



Preface [1851]




The Water-Witch



Explanatory Notes



Textual Commentary



Note on the Manuscripts



Textual Notes



Emendations



Rejected Readings



Word-Division

About the author

Thomas Philbrick is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
Marianne Philbrick (1931–2015) participated in the editing of five volumes of the Writings of James Fenimore Cooper and was the author of
Seasoning, a collection of her poetry.