Letters from an American Farmer

Written by an emigrant French aristocrat turned farmer, the Letters from an American Farmer (1782) posed the famous question `What, then, is the American, this new man?', as the new nation took shape before the eyes of the world.

The Letters addresses some of American literature's most pressing concerns: the issue of American identity, personal determination, and freedom from institutional oppression. Celebrating the largeness and fertility of the land, Crvecoeur's narrative also introduces darker and more symbolic elements, including slavery, and casts a long shadow of influence on subsequent writing about the moral, spiritual, and material topography of the new nation.