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Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur (December 31, 1735 – November 12,1813), naturalized in New York as John Hector St. John, was a French-American writer. He was born in Caen, Normandy, France, to the Comte and Comtesse de Crèvecoeur (Count and Countess of Crèvecoeur).

Biography

In 1755 he emigrated to New France in North America. There, he served in the French and Indian War as a surveyor in the French Colonial Militia, rising to the rank of lieutenant. Following the British defeat of the French Army in 1759 he moved to New York State, then the Province of New York, where he took out citizenship, adopted the English-American name of John Hector St. John, and in 1770 married an American woman, Mehitable Tippet. He bought a sizable farm in Orange County, N.Y., where he prospered as a farmer and took up writing about life in the American colonies and the emergence of an American society. In 1780, during the American Revolution, the faltering health of his father forced him to travel to Europe. Accompanied by his son, he crossed British-American lines to enter British-occupied New York City, where he was briefly imprisoned as an American spy. Eventually, he was able to leave for Britain.

In 1782, in London, he published a volume of narrative essays entitled the Letters from an American Farmer. The book quickly became the first literary success by an American author in Europe and turned Crévecoeur into a celebrated figure. He was the first writer to describe to Europeans--employing many American English terms--the life on the American frontier and to explore the concept of the American Dream, portraying American society as characterized by the principles of equal opportunity and self-determination. His work provided useful information and understanding of the "New World" that helped to create an American identity in the minds of Europeans by describing an entire country rather than another regional colony. The writing celebrated American ingenuity and its uncomplicated lifestyle and spelled out the acceptance of religious diversity in a melting pot being created from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. His application of the Latin maxim "Ubi panis ibi patria" to early American settlers also shows an interesting insight.

From Britain, he sailed for France, where he was briefly reunited with his father. When the United States had been recognized by Britain following the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Crevecoeur returned to New York City. He learned that, in his absence, his wife had died, his farm had been destroyed, and his children were now living with neighbors. Eventually, he was able to regain custody of his children. For most of the 1780s, Crèvecoeur lived in New York City where he now served as the French consul for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. In 1784, he published a two-volume version of his Letters from an American Farmer, enlarged and completely rewritten in French. A three-volume version followed in 1787. Both his English and his French books were translated into several other European languages and widely disseminated throughout Europe. For many years, Crèvecoeur was identified by European readers with his fictional narrator, James, the 'American farmer', and held in high esteem by readers and fellow-writers across Europe. When he published another three-volume work in 1801, entitled Voyage dans la Haute-Pensylvanie et dans l'état de New-York, however, his fame had faded, and his book was ignored. An abbreviated German translation appeared in the following year. An English translation only appeared in 1964. Much of his best work has only been published posthumously, most recently as More Letters from the American Farmer: An edition of the Essays in English Left Unpublished by Crèvecoeur, edited by Dennis D. Moore (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1995).

In 1789, during a stay in France, he was trapped by the political upheaval that was quickly turning into the French Revolution. As an aristocrat, he soon went into hiding, while secretly attempting to gain passage to the United States. The necessary papers were finally denied to him by the new American ambassador to France, James Monroe, in 1794. Crèvecoeur then settled permanently in France. On November 12, 1813, he died in Sarcelles, Val d'Oise, France.

He is the namesake of St. Johnsbury, Vermont at the suggestion of Ethan Allen.

Selected criticism

• Gay W. Allen, An American Farmer. New York: Penguin Books, 1987
• Thomas Hallock, From the Fallen Tree: Frontier Narratives, Environmental Politics, and the Roots of a National Pastoral. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003
• David Eisermann: Crèvecoeur oder Die Erfindung Amerikas. Rheinbach-Merzbach: CMZ-Verlag, 1985

External links

• Works by Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur at Project Gutenberg
• Works by John Hector at Internet Archive
• What Is An American? abstract at shvoong.com

See also

• 1759 in the United States