Letters from an American Farmer

Structure, genre and style

The island of Nantucket is one of several locations depicted in the Letters. An erroneous map, never corrected, was printed in several editions.[8]

Letters is structured around the fictional correspondence via letters between James[9]—an American farmer living in the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania—and an English gentleman, Mr F. B. However, it's only James' letters that are presented, as the addressee's answers are absent.[10] The work consists of twelve letters that address a wide range of issues concerning life in the British colonies in America in the years prior to the American Revolutionary War. The "Introductory Letter" (Letter I) introduces the fictional narrator James, and each subsequent letter takes as its subject matter either a certain topic (Letter III "What is an American?") or a particular location that James visits (Letters IV, VI and IX describe Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and Charles Town respectively),[2][11] though certain themes span or are referred to within several letters. The exception to this is Letter XI, which is written by a Russian gentleman ("Mr. Iw——n Al——z") describing his visit to the botanist John Bartram,[12] but who is presumed to also be writing to Mr F. B.[13] Arranged as a series of discontinuous letters, the work can appear superficially disconnected,[14] although critics have identified various levels of coherence and organization.[15]

The text incorporates a broad range of genres, ranging from documentary on local agricultural practices to sociological observations of the places visited and their inhabitants;[16] Norman Grabo describes it as "an example of the American tradition of book-as-anthology and authorship-as-editing".[14] Whereas early readings of the text tended to consider it "as a straightforward natural and social history of young America",[17] critics now see it as combining elements of fiction and non-fiction in what Thomas Philbrick has termed a "complex artistry".[18] In addition to its usual classification as a form of epistolary, philosophical travel narrative—comparable to Montesquieu's Persian Letters[2]—the text has been considered as a novel,[19] and as a romance.[18][20]


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