The Spy Esprios Classics

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is particularly remembered as a novelist, who wrote numerous sea-stories as well as the historical romances known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, which many people consider his masterpiece. Other works include Precaution (1820), The Spy (1821), The Pioneers (1823), The Red Rover (1828), The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829), The Notions of a Traveling Bachelor (1828), The Waterwitch (1830), The Bravo (1831), The Monikins (1835), The American Democrat (1835) and Homeward Bound (1839).

William Tufnell Le Queux (2 July 1864 - 13 October 1927) was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat (honorary consul for San Marino), a traveller (in Europe, the Balkans and North Africa), a flying buff who officiated at the first British air meeting at Doncaster in 1909, and a wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long before radio was generally available; his claims regarding his own abilities and exploits, however, were usually exaggerated. His best-known works are the anti-French and anti-Russian invasion fantasy The Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and the anti-German invasion fantasy The Invasion of 1910 (1906), the latter becoming a bestseller.

"Dozens of the brightest of flying men from the States had gone over and offered their services to France, the country they loved. In time there came to be so many, that from the ordinary French Flying Corps there was formed a unit entirely made up of Americans. This, in honor of the one great Frenchman whom Americans most honor at home, was called the Lafayette Escadrille. Some of its members had become famous at their profession. Names like those of Lufbery, Thaw, McConnell, Chapman, Prince, Rockwell, Hill, Rumsey, Johnson, Balsley and others became household words among readers of the great dailies in the States."

"The romance of war in its most thrilling form is exemplified in this narrative of the adventures of "The World's Greatest Military Spies and Secret Service Agents." Much has been published upon the subject of espionage, and the memoirs and secret histories of the courts of Europe give us instances of men and women who have gained favor and money, if not honor and glory, by selling back-stairs gossip concerning their fellow creatures; but the aim of the present work has been rather to relate the big exploits of those who faced great personal danger and risked their lives for the sake of flag and country."