With his second novel, The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground, in 1821, James Cooper foundhis true voice and what became his most enduring subject matter: the history of his young nation, born of the clash between Old World and New. Cooper continued in the same vein with Lionel Lincoln; Or, The Leaguer of Boston (1825), a carefully researched panorama of the coming of the Revolution, complete with detailed depictions of the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill. With the hero a native-born American serving in the British Army, issues of loyalty are again complex, and some American reviewers, not for the last time, found Cooper's politics a bit too ambiguous for comfort.
