Susan Fenimore Cooper

<p>T hough primarily recognized as a nineteenth-century American nature writer and environmentalist who significantly influenced Henry David Thoreau Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813–1894) was also an accomplished and productive author in other diverse genres and literary forms including a novel.</p><p> </p><p>In the first book published that treats all of Susan Fenimore Cooper’s known writings preceded by a concise biographical chapter that includes material from Cooper’s personal letters Dr. Rosaly T. Kurth views her literary canon with a wide-ranging lens. In her compelling study Dr. Kurth uniquely incorporates Cooper’s philosophy of environmental stewardship on which scholars have thus far focused into an expansive philosophy that includes familial patriotic and humanitarian stewardships thus embracing the human element as well as the environmental.</p><p> </p><p>Dr. Kurth’s research on the life and works of Cooper dates back to the early 1970s during which time she discovered nineteen of Cooper’s works and as a result in 1977 published the first extensive annotated bibliography of her writings.</p><p> </p><p>In her engaging book Dr. Kurth not only meaningfully and relevantly brings to her work other nineteenthcentury writers including Thoreau but also nineteenth-century women novelists both English and American. Dr. Kurth also intertwines the results of her lifelong interest in fine art and artistic inclinations as she demonstrates in instances the results of Cooper’s remarkable artistic tendencies as manifested in some of her writings.</p><p> </p><p>Included in this work are Cooper’s impassioned series of articles never before treated and with extensive documentation that deal largely with the displacement of the Oneida Indians and their subsequent plight and on related land issues representing in essence the plight of the entire race.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Comprehensively treated Susan Fenimore Cooper’s literary works reveal not only a learned talented cultivated and creative woman writer but also the observant concerned and enlightened mind of a woman expressing herself timelessly on momentous issues not only of man in relation to the natural world around him but of man in relation to his fellow man.</p>