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letters back to Crèvecoeur’s wife and children. He knew that upon their return he would probably be redeployed elsewhere, so he would make arrangements for Lieutenant George Fellowes of Boston to receive the letters. Fellowes left in search of Crèvecoeur’s family. Mrs. Crèvecoeur had died, but Fellowes found the children and persuaded their caretakers to let him take them to Boston. He wrote a letter to Crèvecoeur on December 11, 1781. The letter had gone to London but had returned to New York. Crèvecoeur was reunited with his daughter and younger son in Boston in spring 1784. In New York Crèvecoeur established a packet line running from France to New York. He also encouraged trade between France and America in order to solidify relations between the two countries. Additionally, Crèvecoeur sought to exchange medical information and was instrumental in establishing botanical societies in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey. In June 1785 Crèvecoeur began a furlough that was to have lasted six months but stretched to two years. He was reunited with both his sons (he had sent his younger son to France) at Pierrepont before continuing on to Paris. He remained in Paris, then Pierrepont, for two years. Crèvecoeur fi nally returned to New York, and his role as consul, in June 1787. In 1789, he was elected to the Société Royale d’Agriculture and the American Philosophical Society. In May 1790 one month after his daughter’s marriage, Crèvecoeur returned to France. He had been increasingly worried about the unrest in France and the welfare of his sons. He returned to a changed France. The Reign of Terror, a brutal period in the early 1790s near the end of the French Revolution, had radically transformed the nation. Normandy seemed to be immune to these changes, however. Crèvecoeur returned to Pierrepont in 1796 to take care of the family estate. His father, nearly 90, needed the help of his eldest son. With the exception of brief visits to his daughter and son-in-law, Fanny and Otto, who had settled in France, Crève-
coeur remained at Pierrepont until his father’s death in 1799. He began writing Voyage dans la haute Pensylvanie et dans l’état de New-York in 1800. It was published in France the following year, but its reception was disappointing despite favorable reviews. Except for brief trips to Munich and Hamburg, Crèvecoeur remained in relative anonymity until his death on November 12, 1813, at the age of 78.
Letters from an American Farmer (1782) J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s influence on American literature primarily rests on his Letters from an American Farmer. While readers may be more familiar with other literary works of this period, the well-known idea of America as a melting pot is taken from this novel. Written primarily during his years at Pine Hill (1769–78), the book is an epistolary novel in which an American farmer, Farmer James, writes 12 letters to an imaginary European recipient. The subject of each letter ranges from a celebration of the American farmer as a heroic figure, to the culture of Nantucket, to Charleston and slavery, and to the very defi nition of an American. As in many writings during this period, the influences of the Enlightenment and revolutionary ideals shape the novel even as they shaped the author and his readers, whether European or American. Susan Manning writes that Letters from an American Farmer melds “the thinking of French Enlightenment writing translated into fiction in an American context” (xv). The philosophy and intellectual environment of the Enlightenment differ from those of the 17th century in part in their view on reason. In the 17th century, reason could be found in authority, tradition, and the metaphysical. In the 18th century, however, reason becomes a tool to gain authority and for some philosophers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a move to a more practical, physical world. Crèvecoeur’s choice of central character, a farmer, signals his own attention to personages in a