Lionel Lincoln, or Boston siege

In a situation where the 50th anniversary of the War of Independence was approaching, Cooper conceived a series of novels about this war, which was to be called "Legends of the Thirteen Republics." He planned to devote one novel to the role of each of the thirteen colonies in gaining independence. The first part of this cycle was to be a book about Massachusetts , since it was from Boston that the liberation movement began.

In the course of work on the novel, Cooper thoroughly studied historical materials, eyewitness accounts; he himself went to the places of events that he was going to describe. The book saw the light in the spring of 1825 - a year after a little after the publication of the previous book, the novel " Pilot, or Sea History ".

The protagonist of the novel is an American who serves as a major in the English army and is in love with young Cecilia Dayvor, who lives in Boston. The book describes the first stage of the War of Independence : the campaign of the English units on Concord, the battles at Lexington and on the heights of Bunker Hill and the ensuing siege of Boston by the rebels. But at the same time, the love story takes the main place in the novel.

Lionel Lincoln received generally good press reviews. Reviewers noted the historical accuracy of the battle descriptions, especially under Bunker Hill , but they harshly criticized the love line and the line associated with the main character, noting that “the taste of today's readers of novels requires something completely different from the delicate mental suffering and various intricate everyday stories with their secret doors and trap moves - stories that fascinated the minds and shocked the souls of more romantic generations ” ^[1] .

The audience reacted coolly to the novel. Patriotic American readers could only bewildered about the image as the main character of a native of the colonies serving as an officer in the British army.

• S. Ivanko. Fenimore Cooper. M., 1990.