Letters from an American Farmer
Letters from an American Farmer is a series of letters written by French American writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, first published in 1782. The considerably longer title under which it was originally published is 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 in North America. The twelve letters cover a wide range of topics, from the emergence of an American identity to the slave trade.
Crèvecœur wrote Letters during a period of seven years prior to the American Revolutionary War, while farming land near Orange County, New York. It is told from the viewpoint of a fictional narrator in correspondence with an English gentleman, and each letter concerns a different aspect of life or location in the British colonies of America. The work incorporates a number of styles and genres, including documentary, as well as sociological observations.
Although only moderately successful in America, Letters was immediately popular in Europe upon its publication in 1782. Prompted by high demand, Crèvecœur produced an expanded French version that was published two years later. The work is recognised as being one of the first in the canon of American literature, and has influenced a diverse range of subsequent works.
Biographical background
Born in Caen, Normandy to an aristocratic family, Michel-Guillaume Hector St. John de Crèvecœur received a Jesuit education at the Jesuit Collège Royal de Bourbon. In 1754, having left school, Crèvecœur visited relatives in England where he became engaged; this visit would mark the beginning of a lifelong admiration for the culture and politics of the country. Shortly after this, possibly due to the death of his fiancée, he joined a French regiment in Canada engaged in the French and Indian War. After being wounded in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, Crèvecœur resigned his commission and began traveling widely across Pennsylvania and New York.In 1765, Crèvecœur became an official resident of New York and naturalized as a British subject, adopting the name J. Hector St. John. After working as a surveyor and trader during the subsequent four years, in which he traveled extensively, he purchased farmland in Orange County, New York and married Mehitabel Tippett. During the following seven years, Crèvecœur wrote Letters from an American Farmer and corresponded with William Seton.
As local hostilities between the loyalists and revolutionaries escalated in the build-up to the American Revolutionary War, Crèvecœur decided to return to France; scholars have suggested that he did so in order to secure his legal claim to his patrimony. Upon his arrival in New York City in 1778, Crèvecœur found himself under suspicion of being a Revolutionary spy and was detained; whilst in detention, he suffered a nervous collapse. He was released to travel in September 1780, and traveled to London after landing in Ireland. There, he sold the manuscript of Letters to publishers Davies & Davis before leaving for France.
Summary
Structure, genre and style
Letters is structured around the fictional correspondence via letters between James—an American farmer living in the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania—and an English gentleman, Mr F. B. However, it's only James' letters that are presented, as the addressee's answers are absent. The work consists of twelve letters that address a wide range of issues concerning life in the British colonies in America in the years prior to the American Revolutionary War. The "Introductory Letter" introduces the fictional narrator James, and each subsequent letter takes as its subject matter either a certain topic or a particular location that James visits, though certain themes span or are referred to within several letters. The exception to this is Letter XI, which is written by a Russian gentleman describing his visit to the botanist John Bartram, but who is presumed to also be writing to Mr F. B. Arranged as a series of discontinuous letters, the work can appear superficially disconnected, although critics have identified various levels of coherence and organization.The text incorporates a broad range of genres, ranging from documentary on local agricultural practices to sociological observations of the places visited and their inhabitants; Norman Grabo describes it as "an example of the American tradition of book-as-anthology and authorship-as-editing". Whereas early readings of the text tended to consider it "as a straightforward natural and social history of young America", critics now see it as combining elements of fiction and non-fiction in what Thomas Philbrick has termed a "complex artistry". In addition to its usual classification as a form of epistolary, philosophical travel narrative—comparable to Montesquieu's Persian Letters—the text has been considered as a novel, and as a romance.
Themes
Shift of tone
Letters has been said to exhibit a "model of decline", as the optimistic tone of the early letters is disrupted and the text become increasingly pessimistic; there is a movement from a "joy, pride, wonder" at the spectacle of America, to the "images of the inhuman brutality of slavery". However, there is disagreement over whether this model of decline is produced by James' own disillusionment, or whether it is evidence of Crèvecœur's voice interceding into the narrative; further, critics disagree over where in the narrative the disillusionment occurs, variably placing it in the third, eighth and ninth letters.Relationship with the environment
Among the most significant and recurring themes of Letters is that of the individual and society's relationship with their environment; the work has been read as an "impassioned, unqualified defense of American agrarianism". The theme appears especially in Letter II, III and in the letters describing Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, where James' views are expressive of the doctrine of environmental determinism, that human growth, development and activities are controlled by the physical environment. In Letter III he says:Anna Carew-Miller suggests that what the text articulates on this subject is "the myth that a man's relationship with the land confirms his masculinity and dignity as a citizen."
Reception and legacy
When Crèvecœur offered his manuscript essays to the London publishers Davies & Davis in 1782, they were initially skeptical about the potential for the Letters to be successful. However, the work proved to be instantly popular in England for a variety of reasons. Proponents of political reform such as William Godwin and Thomas Paine approved of the radical anti-government implications of its message. Romantic writers admired, and were influenced by, its evocation of the natural landscape and the individual's relationship to it. More widely, in the final years of the Revolutionary War, the public was eager for the documentary detail Letters provided about America. The popularity of the book led to a second edition being called for only a year later.In continental Europe, Letters proved equally popular. Dutch and German translations were rapidly produced, and prompted by constant demand, editions appeared in such places as Dublin, Paris and Maastricht. In lieu of a second volume of letters, Crèvecœur produced an expanded French version that was published in 1784. The French version, which removed the fictional persona of James, is presented as a series of documents that have been neutrally edited, providing greater documentary detail but at the expense of artistry.
In the twentieth century there was a revival of interest in the text. Critic David Carlson suggests that it was "Not aesthetics, but the politics of nationalism appears to have been the primary force behind Crevecoeur's critical resurrection"—the Letters being among the first works to depict an American "melting pot". Letters, particularly Letter III, is frequently anthologized, and the work is recognized as being one of the first in the canon of American literature.