Early American Literature

Abstract:

This essay reads writings by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, including Letters from an American Farmer (1782) and Journey into Northern Pennsylvania and the State of New-York (1801) against Crèvecoeur's participation in transatlantic scientific exchange and the early history of the cabinet of the American Philosophical Society. Crèvecoeur's donation of a "curious book" of plant-based paper samples to the APS cabinet illuminates his consistent comparisons of his writings to specimens and lost manuscripts. By reading his work alongside the challenges faced by the APS to preserve and maintain its collections, this essay reveals how the instability of collections generated wider preoccupations about loss and longevity. Crèvecoeur's writings demonstrate the intersections between literary and institutional histories of collecting in the eighteenth century and suggest how various kinds of collections shaped literary production in early America.