Tales For Fifteen; Or, Imagination And Heart

Tales For Fifteen; or, Imagination and Heart is one of James Fenimore Cooper’s lesser known works, a collection of stories aimed at a younger and more moralistic readership than the adult novels that built his reputation. Cooper published the volume in 1823 under the pseudonym Jane Morgan, fairly early in his career and at a moment when he was experimenting with different forms and audiences before settling into the historical and adventure fiction modes that would make him famous.

The collection contains stories aimed at young women on the cusp of adulthood, with the imagination and heart of the subtitle pointing to the central theme of the volume. The two stories use familiar contrasts of the period to develop their moral arguments, with characters whose lives are governed by uncontrolled imagination running into difficulties that more grounded characters with proper emotional and moral discipline avoid. The conventions of early nineteenth century didactic fiction for young women are present throughout, and modern readers will find the moralizing more direct than the more atmospheric work of Cooper’s later novels.

What makes the collection interesting beyond its specific period interest is what it reveals about Cooper’s range and about his commercial and literary instincts in the early years of his career. He was working in multiple genres simultaneously and trying out different audience addresses, and Tales For Fifteen represents one of the directions he could have continued to develop if the historical adventure mode had not turned out to be more commercially successful. The pseudonym Jane Morgan also suggests Cooper’s sense that the female didactic fiction market required a specifically female author signature in the period.

For Cooper completists, for students of early American didactic fiction, or for readers interested in how nineteenth century American writers developed their range across multiple audiences and genres, Tales For Fifteen is worth knowing. The stories are short and the moralizing reads as more directly nineteenth century than the more interpretive moral structures of Cooper’s later novels. The volume is now in the public domain and available in various editions, with the Jane Morgan pseudonym being part of the publication history that subsequent editions have variously acknowledged or quietly dropped in favor of Cooper’s actual name.