John Esten Cooke

John Esten Cooke (1830-1886) was born in Winchester, Virginia, studied law with his father, and gave up a modest practice once his writing began to pay. The Virginia Comedians, an 1854 romance of the colonial Tidewater, made his name and is still reckoned his best work; he wrote 31 books in all. In the Civil War he served on the staff of the cavalry commander J. E. B. Stuart, who had married his first cousin, and left the army a major, service that fed Surry of Eagle's-Nest and a military biography of Stonewall Jackson. He spent his last years writing and farming at the Briars in Clarke County, Virginia, where he died in 1886.