_Tales for Fifteen_ owes most of its interest today to its crucial position in the Cooper canon. The literary value of "Imagination" and "Heart," as their author realized, is slight. They were essentially experiments in which he sought to deploy indigenous materials within the conventions of British domestic fiction. "Imagination," with its sprightly observation of American middle-class vulgarities, betrays a satiric awareness that Cooper did later develop; but "Heart" is a forced sentimental indulgence of a sort he never permitted by preference in later works, though he sometimes tolerated it as a concession to feminine readers. For Cooper the chief significance of these stories was that they demonstrated forcibly, if demonstration was necessary, that neither the characteristic materials nor the characteristic forms employed by the British women were congenial to his imagination. His failure was altogether fortunate; for had _The American Tales_ been completed and published instead of _The Spy_, Cooper's career and the course of much of American literature might have been different.
First editions of _Tales for Fifteen_ are the rarest of all Cooper "firsts." The four copies presently known are in the Cooper Collection of the Yale University Library, the American Antiquarian Society, the J. K. Lilly Collection of Indiana University, and the New York Society Library.
NEW-YORK C. WILEY, 3 WALL STREET J. Seymour, printer 1823
Be it remembered, That on the thirteenth day of June, in the forty-seventh year of the Independence of the United States of America, Charles Wiley, of the said District, hath deposited in this office the title of a Book, the right whereof he claims as proprietor, in the words and figures following, to wit:
"Tales for Fifteen; or Imagination and Heart. By Jane Morgan."
In conformity to the Act of Congress of the United States entitled, "An Act for the encouragement of Learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts, and Books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned." And also to an Act, entitled "an Act, supplementary to an Act, entitled an Act for the encouragement of Learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts, and Books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned, and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints."