Cultivators: Susan Fenimore Cooper

Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894) was a writer and amateur naturalist, best known for her “Rural Hours,” her nature diary of Cooperstown, New York. The book was reprinted nine times in her lifetime, and she is considered one of the first American nature writers. Through her writing, she sought to educate readers about the natural world and encourage them to value and protect it.

For Further Reading:

• Susan Fenimore Cooper | J. Fenimore Cooper Society 
• Meet Susan Fenimore Cooper, America’s First Recognized Female Nature Writer | Audubon. 
• Susan Fenimore Cooper: The First American Woman to Publish Nature Writing | Inside Adams

This month, we’re talking about cultivators — women who nurtured, cross-pollinated, experimented, or went to great lengths to better understand and protect the natural world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello. I'm Joya Putnoy, a production assistant here at Wonder
Media Network, and I'm so excited to be guest hosting
this episode of Wumanica. This month, we're talking about cultivators,
women who nurtured, cross pollinated, experimented, or went to great
lengths to better understand and protect the natural world. In

(00:24):
order to truly understand nature, you don't have to be
a scientist. Today's Wumaniquin proved that curious wanderers can make
meaningful contributions to the study of the natural world if
they're willing to embrace it. A simple walk through your
neighborhood in careful observation of your surroundings can go a
long way. That's exactly what led this woman to become

(00:46):
a pioneer of American nature writing. So get out your
notebook and step outside. Let's meet Susan Fenimore Cooper. Susan
was born on April seventeenth, eighteen thirteen, in Scarsdale, New York,

(01:08):
the second child of Susan Delancey and James Fenimore Cooper.
Her father was a novelist and the son of William Cooper,
the founder of Cooperstown. A prosperous settlement in New York State,
and Cooper'stown is where Susan grew up. She had fond
memories of her childhood, spent in the family's large red

(01:28):
farmhouse built by her grandfather. Young Susan or Sue, as
her father called her, relish the natural world. You'd often
find her gazing out at the lake and vast valleys
which surrounded the family home. She spent considerable time between
church and the quaint parlor, where she learned to read
and sew. By eighteen twenty six, the Cooper family had

(01:51):
grown to four daughters and a son and were off
to Europe, where they'd live for the next seven years.
While they traveled all over the continent, Harris was their
home base. As a private school student there, Susan studied language, literature,
world history, geography, and botany, among other subjects. When the

(02:12):
family returned to the US in eighteen thirty three, she
was well read and eager to express her intelligence through writing.
A skilled wordsmith, her father encouraged her interests. The two
were very close, and throughout her twenties, Susan took the
role of assistant to her father's writing career. He'd become
well known for adventure novels, like The Pioneers in the

(02:33):
Last of the Mohicans. In them, details from the culture
and landscape of Cooper's town are interwoven with fiction. Susan
followed in his footsteps. She began her literary career by
writing fictional short stories in the eighteen forties. These tales
eventually blossomed into her first full length novel, eleanor Willis,

(02:56):
a romance mystery. Bolstered by his reputation in the publishing industry,
Susan's father made haste to New York City manuscript in hand,
and sold the book to publishers in London and Philadelphia.
Eleanor Willis was published in eighteen forty six under the
pseudonym Amabel Penfeather. Susan's father was listed as her editor.

(03:20):
As for her foray into nature writing, that story begins
with Susan's grandparents. In a diary entry from eighteen eighty
three titled Small Family Memories, she reflects on their affinity
for nature. Her grandmother had a penchant for florals and
kept a meticulous garden. She remembers piling into her grandfather's

(03:41):
farm wagon with her siblings and driving into the woods.
She writes, in these drives, he taught me to distinguish
the different trees by their growth and bark and foliage.
This was a beach, that an oak, Here was an
ash yonder a tulip tree. He would point out a
tree and ask me to name it, going through a

(04:02):
regular lesson in a very pleasant way. Susan channeled these
early experiences and began keeping field notes in the spring
of eighteen forty eight. For the next year, Susan went
out every day and ambled around the landscape of Cooper's Town,
foraging and capturing aspects of the seasonal changes in her diary.

(04:23):
Her writings celebrated the simple beauty of country living and
connected plants and wildlife to the cultural history of the region.
On an afternoon drive, she came upon a flowering thorn tree.
She noted that during the war, the long spines of
the thorn were occasionally used by the American women for pins.
On one particular warm and soft Saturday, she wrote, the

(04:47):
birds are in an ecstasy. Goldfinches, orioles and bluebirds enliven
the butting trees with their fine voices and gay plumage.
All busy, all happy, all at this season more or
less musical. Her consistent immersion in the flora and fauna
also made her acutely aware of declining wildlife populations and

(05:10):
native plants, which she called out in her writing. This
nature journal became Susan's most celebrated literary work, called Rural Hours,
It was published anonymously in eighteen fifty by a lady Again.
Her father negotiated the book deal, and Susan withheld her identity,
likely in line with the tradition of modesty upheld by

(05:32):
some women authors at the time. Rural Hours was unique
in its quiet, charming musings on the environment. Today, Susan
is recognized as one of the first American women to
publish this kind of nature writing. Upon its completion, Susan's
father wrote in a letter, I have now very little

(05:52):
doubt of its ultimate success. Though at first the American
world will hesitate to decide. Rural Hours did to find
success and went on to be republished nine times in
Susan's lifetime. Some scholars say that Rural Hours inspired the
widely acclaimed Walden by Henry David Thureaux, which came several
years later. A year after Rural Hours, was published, Susan

(06:17):
lost the very person who helped make the book possible,
her father. After his death, Susan took charge of his
literary estate, editing his diaries and unpublished articles in writing
introductions to the reprints of his many novels. From then on,
her personal writing endeavors slowed. With the onset of the

(06:38):
Civil War. She set her sights on community outreach. Susan
led the founding and operations of a local hospital and orphanage.
In the sunset of Susan's life, she published the occasional
essay and wrote stories for children. By the eighteen eighties,
she seldom pursued nature writing. Instead, her work illuminated her

(06:59):
view use on domestic life and shifts in societal values.
Susan held fast to traditional ideas about gender roles, citing
her faith as the firm backbone of these opinions. In
her writing from this time, you'll see that she greatly
opposed the fight for women's rights, particularly women's suffrage. Susan

(07:20):
never married and lived out a quiet life in the
Cooperstown cottage she shared with her sister. She died on
December thirty first, eighteen ninety four, due to a stroke.
Rural Hours has been republished twice since Susan's death and
remains a delightful invitation offered to those whose interest in
rural objects has been awakened, a sort of rustic primer

(07:43):
which may lead them, if they choose to something higher.
All month, we're talking about cultivators. For more information, find
us on Facebook and Instagram at Womanica Podcast Special. Thanks
to Jenny and Liz Kaplan for having me as a
guest host. Talk to you tomorrow.