James Ewing Cooley

James Ewing Cooley was an American bookseller, auctioneer, politician, and author active in New York City during the 19th century. He served in the New York State Senate in 1852 and was later part of the advisory board involved in planning Central Park.

Around the 1830s and 1840s, he worked in the book trade under firms including Cooley & Bangs and later Cooley, Keese & Hill, helping run major New York book auctions. He also married Maria Louisa Appleton, daughter of publisher Daniel Appleton, placing him close to one of the best-known publishing families of the period.

As a writer, he is chiefly remembered for The American in Egypt: with Rambles Through Arabia Petraea and the Holy Land, During the Years 1839 and 1840, published in the early 1840s. The book blends travel writing with firsthand observation and gives modern readers a window into American curiosity about Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean in that era. Cooley died in 1882 in Bagni di Lucca, Italy, where he had been living for several years.