SOURCE: Maddox, Lucy B. “Susan Fenimore Cooper and the Plain Daughters of America.” American Quarterly 40, no. 2 (June 1988): 131-46.

In the following essay, Maddox examines Cooper's relationship with her famous father and the way it informed her writings, particularly her novel, Elinor Wyllys, and her nature journal, Rural Hours.

The story of the way James Fenimore Cooper began his career as a novelist has by now entered the folklore of American literature. Readers who first encounter Cooper in an anthology are likely to learn from the introduction that his first novel was written in response to his wife's challenge: to write something better and more interesting than the imported novel of English manners he was in the process of reading aloud to his family. The eventual result of that challenge was the Leatherstocking novels, a series that was to earn him his reputation as the originator of an American...