Susan Fenimore Cooper was born in 1813 in Scarsdale, New York, the daughter of the novelist James Fenimore Cooper and his wife Susan Augusta DeLancey. She was his second child, and the eldest to survive her youth. As a child, Cooper studied in European schools when she traveled with her family to live there. She sometimes travelled with her father and assisted in documenting and organizing his notes. Much of her life was devoted to him, and he encouraged her practice of art and writing. She also published a great deal herself.