Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief

This satirical novella follows the life of a luxury lace handkerchief, beginning with its origins as a flax plant in France and ending as a high-society accessory in New York. Through the inanimate narrator’s perspective, the narrative tracks the item as it is embroidered by an impoverished seamstress, Adrienne de la Rochefoucauld, and eventually smuggled into the American market. Cooper uses the object’s movement across borders and social classes to document the mechanisms of the nineteenth-century textile trade, the instability of European nobility, and the volatile economics of the American merchant class.

Readers interested in the evolution of American social satire and economic history value this work for its cynical look at speculative markets and status symbols. It appeals to those studying the "it-narrative" genre, where objects reveal the moral failings of their owners. The reader gains a detailed view of the era’s labor conditions and a critique of how fleeting wealth defines social hierarchy. It provides a technical look at fabric production alongside a biting commentary on the vanity of the nouveau riche.