Rural Hours

Rural Hours (formerly Wood + River = Books, est. 2019) specializes in ecology, natural history, nature writing, the environment, environmental literature, and contemporary essay, with a special passion for association copies and notable inscriptions. We draw our name from the popular-but-then-forgotten book by Susan Fenimore Cooper (published in 1850), generally considered the first work of environmental creative nonfiction by a woman in the U.S. We are interested in challenging and expanding the canon of environmental literature and finding books that tell remarkable stories and illuminate the tradition of writing about place and natural history.