Born to Norman minor nobility in 1735, Michel-Guillaume Saint-Jean de Crèvecoeur emigrated to England at age 19, and then, one year later, to Canada, where he worked as a cartographer and surveyor for the French militia. Arriving in upstate New York in 1759, Crèvecoeur continued to travel, working as a surveyor, trapper, and trader. There he changed his name to J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, and was eventually naturalized as a British citizen. In the 1760s, Crèvecoeur began writing the pieces that would eventually be included in Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America. Set in rural America on the cusp of the Revolution, these pieces celebrate the independence of the yeoman …
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Citation: Chaves, Joseph. "J. Hector St John de Crèvecoeur". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 October 2006 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1070, accessed 22 November 2024.]
