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Cooperstown Historian Traces Roots 

Of Mystery Novel To Cooper Daughter

Cooperstown Village Historian Hugh MacDougall fields a question from the Friends of the Library's Hilda Wilcox this afternoon after delivering a paper on "Elinor Wyllys," a little known novel by Susan Fenimore Cooper, daughter of James Fenimore Cooper. The courtroom scene in "Elinor," and her father's 1850 mystery novel, "The Ways of the Hour," were early example of what continues as a popular genre today. (Jim Kevlin/allotsego.com)
Cooperstown Village Historian Hugh MacDougall fields a question from the Friends of the Library’s Hilda Wilcox this afternoon after delivering a paper on “Elinor Wyllys,” a little known 1845 novel by Susan Fenimore Cooper, daughter of James Fenimore Cooper. The courtroom scene in “Elinor,” and her father’s 1850 mystery novel, “The Ways of the Hour,” were early examples of what continues to be a popular genre today, said MacDougall, an expert on the Cooperstown family of writers and a founder of the James Fenimore Cooper Society. (Jim Kevlin/allotsego.com)

 

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