James Fenimore Cooper sailed for Europe with his family on 1 June 1826 for a projected five-year visit. He left New York with the multiple aims of securing favorable European publication agreements for his works, furthering the education of his children, and recovering his health, which had been taxed by his grueling pace of production during the first half of the decade. On all of these scores his sojourn, which lasted seven years, proved successful, as he was able to negotiate with British, French, and German publishers for good terms for The Prairie (1827) and subsequent novels, find tutors for his children, and improve his constitution. Somewhat unexpectedly, he also found that his reputation had preceded him, and his successes as a novelist brought him into contact with European society to a degree unusual for Americans abroad. But Cooper's series of five travel books, which he wrote after his return to...