Michel Guillaume St. Jean de Crèvecœur. Letters from an American Farmer. Written for the information of a friend in England. Edited by J. Hector St. John. 1782.

Available Editions

Letters from an American Farmer. Ludwig Lewisohn, editor. With prefatory note by W. P. Trent. 1904.

W. B. Blake, editor. In Everyman’s Library.

Biography and Criticism

Boynton, Percy H. A Colonial Farmer’s Letters. New Republic, June 19, 1915.

Mitchell, Julia Post. St. Jean de Crèvecœur. 1916.

Tyler, M. C. Literary History of the American Revolution (1765–1783), Vol. II, chap. xxvii. 1897.

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS

Read the characterization of the American colonies in Burke’s “Speech on Conciliation.”

Read the letter entitled “What is an American?” and see how far its generalizations apply to the America of to-day.

Read Zangwill’s play “The Melting Pot” in the light of this letter on “What is an American?”

Read passages which deal with nature for Crèvecœur’s observation on plant and animal life.

Read the closing essay in comparison with Rousseau’s “Émile” for its romantic idealization of primitive life. Compare this essay with the picture of frontier life as presented in “The Deerslayer” or “The Last of the Mohicans.” Note the resemblances to Châteaubriand’s “René.”

Read the opening chapters or divisions of Thoreau’s “Walden” and compare with the Crèvecœur “Letters” in point of the contrasting views on property, labor, and citizenship.

Read Mary Antin’s “The Promised Land” for the differences in the America to which Crèvecœur came and the America which she found.