Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur

Crèvecoeur, Michel-Guillaume Jean de (1735–1813), 18th-century French essayist. He chronicled rural life in early America under the pen name J. Hector St. John. The 12 essays that make up his Letters from an American Farmer (1782) were influential in persuading many Europeans to settle in America. He sided with the British during the American Revolution, and his Sketches of Eighteenth Century America (published posthumously in 1925) was critical of the rebellious colonists. He was French consul to the United States 1783–90.