Begun in 1830, amid the turmoil of the July Revolution in Paris, The Bravo depicts an early eighteenth-century Venice rife with deceit and cruelty, a place where oligarchic senators pretend to govern a republic for the benefit of the masses while using their secret councils to preserve their wealth. For Cooper, the heart of Venetian corruption was its "soulless corporation": councils of senators whose anonymity removed them from personal moral responsibility and whose regular turnover within their class guaranteed the immortality of their state. With French oligarchs quickly usurping their country's liberal revolution, Cooper framed his narrative of the "soulless corporation" to apply equally to contemporary France, aristocratic England, and money-mad America.

This meticulously edited edition, which has received the seal of the Committee on Scholarly Editions of the MLA, is based on the first London edition, the only one Cooper proofread. Incorporating all the changes Cooper made for the revised text of 1834, the AMS edition also includes superior variants from the rough-draft manuscript that were lost during the transmission of the text.

An extensive historical introduction, as well as detailed explanatory notes and valuable contemporary illustrations of Venice, give readers a sense of the context necessary to fully appreciate Coooper's first and best political novel.