Rural Hours. By a Lady
Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894)
New York: George P. Putnam, 1850
First edition
QH81 C79 1850

The daughter of James Fenimore Cooper, Susan Cooper wrote this nature diary about life around Cooperstown, New York. Long overshadowed by Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (published four years later), Rural Hours is now recognized as an important part of nineteenth-century American nature writing. It is likely that Thoreau read it. A prolific writer, Cooper founded an orphanage in Cooperstown in 1873, spending the rest of her life involved in its progress. Begun in a modest house with five pupils, a building built in 1883 sheltered ninety boys and girls by 1900. Orphans were fed, clothed and given a basic education. Bound in publisher’s green blindstamped cloth with gilt spine lettering.