J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur

Michel -Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur ( born January 31, 1735 in Caen, France, † November 12, 1813 in Sarcelles, Paris ) was a French-American writer.

Life

Crèvecoeur 1754 served in the French colonial militia in Canada and worked as a surveyor later. In 1765 he became a citizen of the province ( later State ) New York and purchased a large farm in the hinterland. There he wrote in American English narrative essays and sketches; a selection was published in 1782 under the title of Letters from an American Farmer in London.

The American War of Independence in 1780 forced him to return to Europe. Finally Over the UK it reached France, where he recorded connection to his father Armand de Crèvecoeur. In Paris he published in 1784 Lettres d'un Cultivateur Américain, a French version of his " American Farmers ", which greatly in style and expression differs from the English original (1787 was followed by an expanded edition ). The English and still more the French version made ​​Crèvecoeur to the best-known American author of his time. Within a few years published German and Dutch translations of his "Letters of an American compatriot ".

Readers in many European countries experienced by Crèvecoeur for the first time of characteristic elements of a new America image - from life on the western border of the settlement ( " frontier" ), the " melting pot ", the mixing of immigrants from different European countries to a new breed of people of Americans ("? What is an American " ) and of the "American dream", work your way up by working from simple beginnings to wealth and success - regardless of class differences, were typical for Europe and its feudal states.

As a French consul, he returned in 1783 after the Treaty of Paris to the United States back. As such Crèvecoeur resided since his property was completely destroyed, in New York. During a stay in France in 1789, he experienced the beginning of the French Revolution. His attempt to emigrate to the USA, failed in 1794 when he denied James Monroe, the new American ambassador in Paris, the necessary support. Crèvecoeur retired to the family estate in Sarcelles. Here then arose also carry out preparatory work to his late work, which appeared in 1801 under the title " Voyage dans la Haute et dans l' état ​​de Pensylvanie New York." Already in the following year appeared one, but abridged German translation; an English translation was not published until 1964.

Crèvecoeur published his letters in English under the pseudonym John Hector St. John, the name under which it was originally naturalized in New York. This work is one of the most important literary sources for colonial daily life and the emergence of the American nation.

On November 12, 1813 Michel -Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur died at the age of 78 years in Sarcelles.

Works

• The divided loyalist.
• Letters from an American Farmer. In 1782.
• Lettres d'un Cultivateur Américain. 1784; expanded in 1787.
• Voyage aux grandes de salines flying foxes Reichenhall. In 1808.
• Voyage dans la Haute et dans l' état ​​de Pensylvanie New York. 1801.
• Sketches of Eighteenth - Century America. Published in 1925 from the estate.