John Cook (ca. 1764–1823), merchant and librarian, was born in England and immigrated to the region around Albany, New York, in the 1790s. Having settled in nearby Ballston Spa, he sold the medicinal springwater found there from at least 1806 and, in 1808, established a subscription library. Shortly thereafter Cook moved his operations to Albany, where he continued to sell mineral water and other items and operated a reading room and library with nearly twelve hundred volumes and a wide assortment of newspapers and periodicals. In 1814 he added a “Ladies’ Literary Lounge” for the exclusive use of his female patrons. Six years later Cook obtained a concurrent position as the librarian of the local apprentices’ library. In addition to his other duties he served as the first librarian of the New York State Library from 1818 until his death in Albany (Cecil R. Roseberry, For the Government and People of This State: A History of the New York State Library [1970], 2, 5, 7, 9; University of the State of New York, Bulletin 800 [15 Mar. 1924]: 63–6; Albany Republican Crisis, 12 Mar. 1807; Albany Gazette, 29 Feb. 1808, 19 May 1814; Ballston Spa Independent American, 25 Oct. 1808; Albany Balance, & New-York State Journal, 16 Jan. 1810; Cooperstown Watch-Tower, 25 Aug. 1823).

Cook had extracts from the enclosed work published in the Leesburg Genius of Liberty, 7, 14 Apr. 1818.