Letters from an American Farmer: Selections
  • Publication Date: July 21, 2023
  • ISBN: 9781554816361 / 155481636X
  • 108 pages; 5½" x 8½"

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Letters from an American Farmer: Selections

  • Publication Date: July 21, 2023
  • ISBN: 9781554816361 / 155481636X
  • 108 pages; 5½" x 8½"

Banner reading Teaching the survey? Learn more about The Broadview Anthology of American Literature, with covers of the available volumes

Letters from an American Farmer is increasingly recognized as one of the foundational texts in the study both of American literature and of American history. This compact edition combines a selection of the most important, accessible, and engaging sections of Crèvecoeur’s work with a focused selection of background contextual material. The result is an edition ideally suited for use in a wide range of undergraduate courses.

This volume is one of a number of editions that have been drawn from the pages of the acclaimed Broadview Anthology of American Literature. The series is designed to make selections from the anthology available in a format convenient for use in a wide variety of contexts; each edition features an introduction and exaplanatory footnotes, and is designed to meet the needs of today’s students.

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Introduction

from Letters from an American Farmer

  • from Letter 2: On the Situation, Feelings, and Pleasures of an American Farmer
  • from Letter 3: What Is an American?
  • from Letter 4: Description of the Island of Nantucket
  • from Letter 9: Description of Charles-Town
  • from Letter 10: On Snakes; and on the Hummingbird
  • from Letter 12: Distresses of a Frontier Man

In Context

  • A Pennsylvania Farm
  • Nantucket and Charles-Town
  • Reactions to Letters from an American Farmer
    • from Rev. Samuel Ayscough, Remarks on the Letters from an American Farmer; or, a Detection of the Errors of Mr. J. Hector Saint John; Pointing out the Pernicious Tendency of Those Letters to Great Britain (1783)
    • from Correspondance Littéraire, Philosophique et Critique par Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, Meister, etc. (January 1785)
    • from Barrett Wendell, A Literary History of America (1900)
  • Rationalizing Colonialism: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Washington
    • from Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1660): from Chapter 13 “Of the Natural Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery”
    • from John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government (1689): from Chapter 5 “Of Property”
    • from George Washington, letter to James Duane, 7 September 1783