The way of improvement leads home [electronic resource] : Philip Vickers Fithian and the rural Enlightenment in early America / John Fea.

Philadelphia [Pa.] : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2008. (Baltimore, Md. : Project Muse, 2013) (Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2013)

1 online resource (1 electronic text (269 p.) :) ill., maps, digital file.

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The Way of Improvement Leads Home traces the short but fascinating life of Philip Vickers Fithian. Born to Presbyterian grain-growers in rural New Jersey, he was never quite satisfied with the agricultural life he seemed destined to inherit. Fithian longed for something more- to improve himself in a revolutionary world that was making upward mobility possible. Fithian is best known for the diary that he wrote in 1773-74 while working as a tutor at Nomini Hall, the Virginia plantation of Robert Carter, and his role as a Revolutionary War chaplain. From the villages of New Jersey, Fithian was able to participate indirectly in the eighteenth-century republic of letters- a transatlantic intellectual community. Participation required a commitment to self-improvement that demanded a belief in the Enlightenment values of human potential and social progress. He constantly struggled to reconcile this quest for a cosmopolitan life with his love of home. It was the people, the religious culture, and the very landscape of his "native sod" that continued to hold Fithian's affections.

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English

November 13, 2013

Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-255) and index.

Project Muse.