ABSTRACT
Born on a farm six miles outside Hartford, Connecticut, on February 17, 1827, Rose Terry Cooke was the older daughter of Henry Wadsworth Terry and Anne Wright Hurlburt. Because delicate health and illness marked her early years, Cooke spent much time outside with her landscape-gardener father who gave her an appreciation for nature and a knowledge of gardening. In 1848 at age twenty-one, Cooke received an inheritance from an uncle that enabled her to give up teaching and devote herself to writing. Biographers are uncertain as to exactly when Cooke began writing her fiction; however, a clear record begins in 1855 with her publication of “The Mormon’s Wife” in Putnam’s. In 1887, Cooke followed her husband to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in his attempt to start a new business. With Cooke’s masterful handling, characters and actions in the fiction take on a universality that transcends the designation of Cooke as only a regional writer.
