SOURCE: Magee, Richard M. “Sentimental Ecology: Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours.” In Such News of the Land: U.S. Women Nature Writers, edited by Thomas S. Edwards and Elizabeth A. De Wolfe, pp. 27-36. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2001.

In the following essay, Magee examines Cooper's role as one of the earliest American nature writers, claiming that she combined elements of domestic fiction and natural history to create a sub-genre that Magee calls “sentimental ecology.”

Susan Fenimore Cooper, the daughter of the famous novelist, was an early voice in the tradition of American nature writing, publishing her nature journal Rural Hours four years before Thoreau's Walden appeared.¹ This journal of her life in rural Cooperstown is vastly important in the tradition of American nature writing, as it was one of the first American natural histories and the first written by a woman. She acknowledges her...