![]() ![]() 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. 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. Fithian longed for something more-to improve himself in a revolutionary world that was making upward mobility possible. ![]() Born to Presbyterian grain-growers in rural New Jersey, he was never quite satisfied with the agricultural life he seemed destined to inherit. ![]() 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. ![]()
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