SOURCE: Cunningham, Anna K. “Susan Fenimore Cooper—Child of Genius.” New York History 25 (July 1944): 339-50.

In the following essay, Cunningham provides an overview of Cooper's writing career, attempting to explain her status as a minor figure in nineteenth-century American literature despite her considerable talent and early promise.

In the summer of 1813 young James Cooper (the Fenimore was not formally added until an act of the New York State Legislature in 1826) drove with his wife and infant daughters, Elizabeth and Susan Augusta, from Mamaroneck up to Cooperstown, the settlement founded by his father, Judge William Cooper. James Cooper brought his little family over the old Cherry Valley Turnpike down into Otsego in a carriage which he called—in the vocabulary of a seafaring man,¹—the “rasée”. The little party in the rasée, drawn by a team of greys, stopped to rest at Cherry Valley. There the elder...