Early Life
Born in Winchester, Virginia, he was noted for writing about that state. He illustrated Virginia life and history in the novels, The Virginia Comedians (1854), and The Wearing of the Gray, a tale of the American Civil War, and more formally in a respected Virginia history. His style was somewhat high-flown. He was the author of The Youth of Jefferson.
Cooke was one of 13 children of John Rogers Cooke and Maria Pendleton Cooke. He was born on the family's plantation, "Amber's Hill," near Winchester, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. At his father’s urging, he studied and practiced law briefly in Richmond. He abandoned that in 1854 after his father’s death, and almost immediately became a successful novelist and prolific short story writer, eventually authoring 31 books and almost 200 published articles and poems. Cooke joined the Richmond Howitzers, a militia artillery unit, in the 1850s, earning the rank of sergeant.
Read more about this topic: John Esten Cooke
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