Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief is a serial novel by James Fenimore Cooper first published by Graham's Magazine in 1843.
[1] The novel explores the upper crust of New York Society from the perspective of a woman's handkerchief.
[1] The novel was published in whole in 1843 by Cooper's London publisher Richard Bentley under a separate title, The French Governess; or, The Embroidered Handkerchief.
[1] Critic Thomas Bender describes the whole novel as devoted "to the subject of the evils of selfishly attempting to achieve higher place".
[3] The city of New York, in this context, represent the evils of "struggle for social status" and this becomes the model for the woes and disorder caused by this struggle.