Susan Fenimore Cooper

Book excerpt: 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.