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Audubon Magazine Features

Cooperstown Nature Writer

Susan Fenimore Cooper’s Reputation Rising

COOPERSTOWN – This month’s edition of Audubon magazine features Susan Fenimore Cooper, whose “Rural Hours” (1850) was mentioned by Henry David Thoreau his journals prior to the publication of his famous “Walden” (1854).

Credited simply as “by a lady,” her “Rural Hours,” while praised by such giants at Charles Darwin, prevented Susan from even approaching the fame of her father, James Fenimore Cooper.

The article, by Michael Branch, University of Nevada professor, is headlined, “Meet Susan Fenimore Cooper, America’s First Recognized Female Nature Writer.”

“We know Thoreau was familiar with Cooper’s work and, while I don’t think anyone can quite prove it, it is hard to imagine that he wasn’t influenced by her writing in some way,” wrote Branch. “It’s really solid natural science, exactly the kind of stuff he loved.”

Despite Cooper’s initial success with “Rural Hours” and its nine-edition run during her lifetime, she is little-known today, Branch wrote. By publishing anonymously, she “was following a tradition of female authors being modest and not claiming authorship,” College of Idaho professor Rochelle Johnson, who co-edited a 1998 edition of “Rural Hours” and is now writing a biography of Cooper, was quoted as saying.