"The Way of Improvement Leads Home" traces the short but
fascinating life of Philip Vickers Fithian, one of the most
prolific diarists in early America. 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. While 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,
this first full biography moves beyond his experience in the Old
Dominion to examine his inner life, his experience in the early
American backcountry, his love affair with Elizabeth Beatty, 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 sustained through sociability, print, and
the pursuit of mutual improvement. The republic of letters was
above all else a rational republic, with little tolerance for those
unable to rid themselves of parochial passions. Participation
required a commitment to self-improvement that demanded a belief in
the Enlightenment values of human potential and social progress.
Although Fithian was deeply committed to these values, he
constantly struggled to reconcile his quest for a cosmopolitan life
with his love of home. As John Fea argues, it was the people, the
religious culture, and the very landscape of his "native sod" that
continued to hold Fithian's affections and enabled him to live a
life worthy of a man of letters.
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