SOURCE: Norwood, Vera. “Pleasures of the Country Life: Susan Fenimore Cooper and the Seasonal Tradition.” In Made from this Earth: American Women and Nature, pp. 25-53. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

In the following essay, Norwood discusses Cooper's entry into the male-dominated arena of nature writing, the specific gender issues she brought to the genre, and her continuing influence on women's nature writing well into the twentieth century.

We are none of us very knowing about the birds in this country, unless it be those scientific gentlemen who have devoted their attention especially to such subjects. The same remark applies in some measure to our native trees and plants; to our butterflies and insects. But little attention has yet been given by our people generally, to these subjects … Had works of this kind been as common in America as they are in England, the volume now...