What set Rural Hours apart from the previous books written by her father and grandfather was Susan's remarkable attention to detail and accuracy in natural historical observations, and explicit call for preservation of the Otsego forests.

[6] Its noteworthy that this prescient call for forest preservation was published four years prior to Walden, 14 years prior to George Perkins Marsh's man and nature;[6] or Physical geography as modified by human action (1864), two books recognized as among the earliest call for the preservation of American forests.

In recent years, beginning with the 1998 republication of Rural Hours, Cooper has begun to achieve recognition as a significant writer in her own right.

[7] Rural Hours in particular has been called the "first major work of environmental literary nonfiction by an American woman writer, both a source and a rival of Thoreau's Walden.

"[7] This book went through six editions and the last one was published in 1887; it was formed through a daily diary kept by Cooper and included lengthy discussions of nature, drawings of birds native to her dwelling area as well as flowers and other plants.

[1] Although Cooper was considered an amateur, Rural Hours caught the eye of scientist Charles Darwin and author Henry David Thoreau.

According to a journal kept by Henry David Thoreau, he read part of Rural Hours and circumstantial evidence suggests that some of the most memorable passages from Thoreau's 1854 book Walden may have been suggested by several of Cooper's own passages on loons, wild berries, the perceived bottomlessness of the lake, and the seasonal breaking of the ice.

While some writers today, such as Jack Kramer, claim that the plates in illustrated edition of Rural Hours were by Cooper, no evidence to that effect remains.