Masthead of The New World, October 1842 , which featured Oakes Smith's novel The Western Captive, for which, according to Oakes Smith in her autobiography, she was paid one hundred dollars. Park Benjamin and his printer Jonas Winchester published at least one bound paperback edition, printed with the same plates. In preceding weeks, the novel was actually advertised as “The Western Captain” with a description that mis-prepared readers for a story about male heroes of the Indian Wars. While a letter from Charles F. Hoffman to Rufus Griswold in 1843 indicates that Oakes Smith had written the story before she arrived in New York, and thus during the Presidential campaign won by William Henry Harrison in 1840, the “false advertising” seems to begin a pattern—a “feint” that drew the average reader in only to revise their understanding of the historical moment referenced in the work.
