SOURCE: Toth, Susan Allen. “Rose Terry Cooke (1827-1892).” American Literary Realism 1870-1910 4, no. 2, (spring 1971): 170-76.

In the following essay, Toth provides an overview of scholarship on Rose Terry Cooke.

I. History of Criticism

Although her romantic poetry, religious tracts, and sentimental love stories may have been justly forgotten, Rose Terry Cooke's New England local-color tales have never won deserved recognition, either in proportion to their wide publication or to their varying literary merit. James Russell Lowell praised her early collection of poems in 1861, but he spoke more enthusiastically of her “as a writer of picturesque and vigorous prose, as one of the most successful sketchers of New England character, abounding in humor and pathos” (Atlantic, 7 [Mar 1861], 382). Since Cooke was unable to realize enough profit by her poetry, she turned increasingly to fiction, publishing short stories and sketches in leading magazines like Putnam's, Galaxy, Harper's, and Atlantic for more...