2. This friend of Crèvecœur’s was one of the most famous lawyers of his day. Like his colleague and close friend Elie de Beaumont, he was concerned with social justice and was associated with the Jansenist opposition to the Maupeou parlement. He became a member of the Académie française in 1785, the first lawyer to be elected in more than a century, and helped draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man: David A. Bell, Lawyers and Citizens: the Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime France (New York and Oxford, 1994), pp. 131–3; Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: a Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1996), p. 262.

3. This was Crèvecœur’s Letters from an American Farmer (London, 1782), which was already a success in England. Crèvecœur’s translation, Lettres d’un cultivateur américain, undertaken at the suggestion of Mme d’Houdetot and her friends, was published at Paris in 1784. For an account of the work’s publication, reception, and translation see Howard C. Rice, Le Cultivateur américain: étude sur l’œuvre de Saint John de Crèvecœur (Paris, 1933), pp. 59–106. See also Julia Post Mitchell, St. Jean de Crèvecoeur (New York, 1916), pp. 73–8.