Precaution (1820) is the first novel by American author James Fenimore Cooper.

[1][2] The result was Precaution, which was published anonymously and instead accredited to an English woman.

The publisher, A. T. Goodrich, later surprised the public by revealing that Precaution was authored by a man from New York.

Cooper later noted that, in writing Precaution, he "embraced a crude effort to describe foreign manners".

He responded to critics who thought he should focus on American topics by using a more patriotic theme in his next book, The Spy.