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Explanation and Analysis:
As the name suggests, Letters from an American Farmer is an epistolary novel, a novel in the form of letters (addressed, in this case, by James to his friend Mr. F. B. in England). The book begins with a note, however, from de Crèvecoeur himself:
To The
Abbé Raynal, F.R.S.Behold, sir, an humble American planter, a simple cultivator of the earth, addressing you from the farther side of the Atlantic and presuming to fix your name at the head of his trifling lucubrations.
The line between James and de Crèvecoeur is intentionally blurry—both are humble American planters, and the book is written as if it is a nonfiction account of a farmer's life. "Trifling lucubrations" refers to the fact that within each letter, James expounds on different aspects of colonial life. The variety of topics and locations that de Crèvecoeur covers on this tour of America also qualifies his novel as a work of travel writing (in particular, James cannot say enough about Nantucket).
Finally, Letters from an American Farmer is also something altogether more grandiose, despite its narrator's humble professions. As de Crèvecoeur includes at the end of James's his initial address, this is not just James's perspective but "the echo of those of my countrymen." To a certain extent, de Crèvecoeur attempts to write this novel from the perspective of all American farmers, and to capture not just the day-to-day activities of agrarian colonial society but the emotional and ideological weight of this life. Letters is therefore also a work of American myth—an attempt to frame the American colonies, in their primordial state, as a complex but nonetheless bucolic land of farms and forests.
