Confederate soldier and Virginian novelist; born in Winchester, in the Shenandoah valley, on the 3rd of November 1830; the son of John Rodgers Cooke, an eminent Virginia jurist, and nephew of General Philip St. George Cooke. At an early age he removed to Richmond, where he was educated for the bar. He soon abandoned law for literature, moved thereto by the success of his story, in the Fenimore Cooper strain, entitled Leather Stocking and Silk, a Story of the Valley of Virginia (1854). In the same year the Harpers published his Youth of Jefferson and The Virginia Comedians, romances of Virginian life and manners in the eighteenth century. With several later works he became the delineator of colonial Virginia life, and was accepted as the portrayer of this special feature of Southern conditions. His style was marred by superabundant sentiment and ornamentation. The Civil War found him on the staff of his relative, Gen. R. E. Lee. He served in nearly all the battles of Virginia, and at Lee’s surrender was inspector-general of the horse artillery of the army of northern Virginia. After Appomattox he resumed his pen, but it ran on war themes, interweaving reminiscence with romance, and softening the stern features of war with the glamor of chivalry. In addition to lives of Stonewall Jackson (1863) and R. E. Lee (1871), his pen produced fifteen romances of wartime. He edited a Life of Captain John Smith and prepared Virginia, a History of the People (1883) for the American Commonwealth Series. This became very popular as a textbook. His last work was My Lady Pokahontas (1885), a novel version of the old colonial story. He died at The Briars, in Clark County, VA, on the 27th of September 1886.
