Rural HoursRural Hours (1850) is one of the earliest pieces of American nature writing and the first by a woman. This new edition, the only printing of the full original text since 1876, restores passages excised by the author for an 1887 edition. The daughter of the novelist James Fenimore Cooper, Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813 1894), uses narratives and descriptions of her walks and excursions to reveal her ideal society as a rural one, carefully poised between