Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio

by Claude-François de Lezay-Marnésia, Benjamin Hoffmann (Introduction), Alan J. Singerman (Translator)

Overview

First published in French in 1792, Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio tells the fascinating story of French aristocrat Claude-François de Lezay-Marnésia and the utopia he attempted to create in what is now Ohio.

Looking to build a perfect society based on what France might have become without the Revolution, Lezay-Marnésia bought more than twenty thousand acres of land along the banks of the Ohio River from the Scioto Company, which promised French aristocrats a fertile, conflict-free refuge. But hostilities between the U.S. Army and the Native American tribes who still lived on the land prevented the marquis from taking possession. Ruined and on the verge of madness, Lezay-Marnésia returned to France just as the Revolution was taking a more radical turn. He barely escaped the guillotine before dying a few years later in poverty and desperation.

This edition of the Letters, introduced and edited by Benjamin Hoffmann and superbly translated by Alan J. Singerman, presents the work for the first time since the beginning of the nineteenth century—and the first time ever in English. The volume features a rich collection of supplementary documents, including texts by Lezay-Marnésia’s son, Albert de Lezay-Marnésia, and the American novelist Hugh Henry Brackenridge. This fresh perspective on the young United States as it was represented in French literature casts new light on a captivating and tumultuous period in the history of two nations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780271077161
Publisher:	Penn State University Press
Publication date:	12/21/2016
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Benjamin Hoffmann is Assistant Professor of Early Modern French Studies at The Ohio State University. His publications in French include four novels and a forthcoming scholarly book.

Alan J. Singerman is Richardson Professor Emeritus of French at Davidson College and the editor and translator of the abbé Prévost’s novel The Greek Girl’s Story (Penn State, 2014).

Table of Contents

Contents

Editor’s Note and Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio

Editor’s Foreword

Letter to Monsieur Le Chevalier de Boufflers

Letter to Monsieur Jacques-Henri-Bernadin de Saint-Pierre

Letter to my Eldest Son

Appendix

Prospectus for the Colony on the Ohio and Scioto Rivers in America

The French on the Banks of the Scioto

The Paris High Court on the Scioto

Letter Written by a Frenchman Emigrating to the Lands of the Scioto Company

New Prospectus of the Scioto Company

Modern Chivalry

Letter to Monsieur Audrain

My Memories

Chronology

Bibliography

Index of Proper Names

Notes

Editorial Reviews

This book is a major addition to the fields of American studies and the history of political thought, and it will be welcomed by historians and political theorists alike. Benjamin Hoffmann’s erudite introduction offers a genuine tour de force in intellectual history that brings a significant contribution to an important ongoing debate on the image and role of America in the new world order.”

—Aurelian Craiutu,author of A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748–1830

“Hoffman’s excellent edition includes an introduction with a full account of the background to the proposed colony and its checkered history, as well as an analysis of the literary strategies and ‘alternative facts’ that characterize the Letters. . . . The book will interest students of American Studies, French Revolutionary history, travel literature, Rousseau, and utopian fiction. We add to that potential audience those persons . . . with personal or professional roots in the regions around the banks of the Ohio.”

—Kathleen Hardesty Doig XVIII New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century

From the Publisher