| Top | Primary Works

Letters From an American Farmer: Describing Certain Provincial Situations, Manners, and Customs, Not Generally Known; and Conveying Some Idea of the Late and Present Interior Circumstances of the British Colonies of North America, 1782 &endash; This was written by Crèvecoeur to inform a friend in England.

Lettres d'un Cultivateur Américain (Letters From an American Farmer) Écrites à (written to) A W.S. Ecuyer, depuis l'année (since the year) 1770, jusqu'à (up 'til) 1781." Traduites de l'anglois par *** (translated from English by…(?).

Sketches of Eighteenth Century America: More "Letters From an American Farmer, 1923."

Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans l'État de New-York, Par un Membre Adoptif de la Nation Onéida. Traduit et publié par l'auteur des Lettres d'un Cultivateur Américain, translated by Clarissa S. Bostelmann. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964. F153 .C923

Eighteenth-century travels in Pennsylvania & New York. Translated & edited by Percy G. Adams. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1961. F153 .C923

 

| Top | Selected Bibliography

Adams, Percy G., ed. Crevecoeur's 18th Century Travels in Pennsylvania and New York. Lexington: U of Kentucky, 1961. G100 .A44

Allen, Gay Wilson & Roger Asselineau. St. Jean de Crevecoeur: the Life of an American Farmer. 1987.

Arch, Stephen C. "Progressive Steps of the Narrator in Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer." Studies in American Fiction 18 (1990): 145.

Cutting, Rose Marie. John and William Bartram, William Byrd II and St. John de Crevecoeur: A Reference Guide. Boston: Hall, 1976.

Grabo, Norman S. "Crevecoeur's American: beginning the world anew." The William and Mary Quarterly (April 1991): 159.

Philbrick, Thomas. St. John de Crevecoeur. NY: Twayne, 1970. PS737.C5 Z85

Robinson, David M. "Community and utopia in Crevecoeur's sketches." American Literature 62 (1990): 15-17.

Winston, Robert P. "'Strange Order of Things!' The Journey to Chaos in Letters from an American Farmer." Early American Literature 19.3 (Wint 1984-85): 249-67.

| Top | Crevecoeur's most important contribution - Letters From An American Farmer (E-Text)

According to Thomas Philbrick (listed above, pages 43-166), Letters was received as the most recent contribution to a growing body of works which sought (or pretended) to supply the British reading public with reliable accounts of the land and the peoples of the troublesome North American colonies.

I. Outline

Letter I: Introduction - establishes the circumstances of James, the American Farmer's correspondence with Mr. F. B. and suggests the point of view of the succeeding letters (a systematic survey of American society in all its manifestations).

Letter II: Consists of an informal and impressionistic report "On the Situation , Feelings, and Pleasures of an American Farmer" as the narrator has experienced them on his farm in central Pennsylvania.

Letter III: "What is an American?" attempts to answer the query of its title by taking a sweeping survey of the impact of America on the European immigrant, a survey which sketches the diversity of American life but which concentrates on the rural culture of the middle colonies.

Letters IV-VIII: Describe in detail the manners and customs of the whaling villages of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.

Letter IX: Gives a brief account of Charleston, South Carolina.

Letters X-XI: Return the reader to the middle colonies, first for some sketches of the birds and snakes on the narrator's farm and then for the report of a Russian gentleman on his visit to John Bartram, the celebrated Pennsylvania naturalist.

Letter XII: The farmer pictures, in highly emotional colors, the disruption of his life by the outbreak of the Revolution and expresses his intention of fleeing with his family to an Indian village in the remote wilderness.

II. Importance of the Letters

1. Provides useful information and understanding of the New World.

2. Creation of personas, or disguises - James, the American Farmer.

3. Tries to create an American identity - it is an attempt to describe an entire country, not merely regional colonies.

4. Celebrates American innocence and simplicity.

5. Describes American tolerance for religious diversity.

6. Asks the important question - what is an American?

7. He is the first writer to explore the concept of the American Dream.

III. Limitations of the Letters

1. Specific details in matters of geography, religion, history, and politics are missing.

2. He glosses over the issue of slavery.

3. American agriculture is treated generally too - absence of details.

IV. Features of the Utopian Frontier:

Mild government, no church tithes or dues, no autocratic prince or lord, no "absurd ordinances," no middleman in agriculture, peaceable inhabitants, no military laws, and no conscription or draft.

| Top | Study Questions

1. For eighteenth-century writer Crèvecoeur, witnessing slavery firsthand leads him to lament the "strange order of things" in Letter IX from Letters from an American Farmer. Analyze the difficulty he has reconciling the existence of slavery and the great contrast between lives of plantation owners and slaves in Charles-Town with his own belief in a "sublime hand which guides the planets round the sun."

2. Evaluate Woolman's (in "Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes") and Crèvecoeur's (in Letter III) different uses of the phrase self-interest. How does the phrase become central to two very different arguments about who Americans are and what they should be?

3. Compare and contrast Woolman's and Crèvecoeur's understanding of "strangers" and their place in "American" society.

MLA Style Citation of this Web Page:

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 2: Early American Literature: 1700-1800 - St. Jean De Crevecoeur." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap2/creve.html (provide page date or date of your login).  

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