The Two Admirals is an 1842 nautical fiction novel by American author James Fenimore Cooper. The novel was written after the Leatherstocking Tales novel The Deerslayer . Set during the 18th century and exploring the British Royal Navy, Cooper wrote the novel out of encouragement of his English publisher, who recommended writing another sea novel. [1] Cooper had originally intended to write a novel where ships were the main characters, though eventually decided not to. [2] The novel is one of three novels which Cooper would revise for editions following their first printing, the other two being The Pathfinder and Deerslayer . [2]
When republishing the novel in the 1860s, Cooper's daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper, described the novel as "the least successful of his romances of the sea". [1] Despite the novel not having a large legacy, critic Steven Harthorn describes the novel as one of Cooper's deepest studies of masculinity. [3]
The original manuscript for the novel is held by the Special Collections Department at the University of Virginia Library and contains 257 pages. [4]