(Typee is a fast-moving adventure tale, an autobiographica...)
Typee is a fast-moving adventure tale, an autobiographical account of the author's Polynesian stay, an examination of the nature of good and evil, and a frank exploration of sensuality and exotic ritual.
(On board the whaling ship Pequod a crew of wise men and f...)
On board the whaling ship Pequod a crew of wise men and fools, renegades and seeming phantoms is hurled through treacherous seas by crazed Captain Ahab, a man hell-bent on hunting down the mythic White Whale. Herman Melville transforms the little world of the whale ship into a crucible where mankind's fears, faith and frailties are pitted against a relentless fate.
(Billy Budd, Sailor and Bartleby, the Scrivener are two of...)
Billy Budd, Sailor and Bartleby, the Scrivener are two of the most revered shorter works of fiction in history. Here, they are collected along with 19 other stories in a beautifully redesigned collection that represents the best short work of an American master.
(This first volume of The Library of America's three-volum...)
This first volume of The Library of America's three-volume edition of the complete prose works of Herman Melville includes three romances of the South Seas. Typee and Omoo, based on the young Melville's experiences on a whaling ship, are exuberant accounts of the idyllic life among the "cannibals" in Polynesia. Mardi ("the world" in Polynesian) is a mixture of love story, adventure, and political allegory, set on a mythical Pacific island, that looks forward to the complexities of Moby-Dick.
(In the sorrowful tragedy of Billy Budd, Sailor; the contr...)
In the sorrowful tragedy of Billy Budd, Sailor; the controlled rage of Benito Cereno; and the tantalizing enigma of Bartleby, the Scrivener; Melville reveals himself as a singular storyteller of tremendous range and compelling power. In these stories, Melville cuts to the heart of race, class, capitalism, and globalism in America, deftly navigating political and social issues that resonate as clearly in our time as they did in Melville’s. Also including The Piazza Tales in full, this collection demonstrates why Melville stands not only among the greatest writers of the nineteenth century, but also as one of our greatest contemporaries.
(The fruit of decades of textual scholarship, this fourth ...)
The fruit of decades of textual scholarship, this fourth and final volume of the Library of America Melville edition gathers for the first time in one volume all of Melville’s poems: the four books of poetry published in his lifetime, his uncollected poems, and the poems from two projected volumes of poetry and prose left unfinished at his death.
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet, best known for his novels of the sea, including his masterpiece, Moby Dick. Melville belongs to the group of artists whose works grew in importance and stature after their death. His works exemplify the genre of Dark Romanticism.
Background
Ethnicity:
His forebears had been among the Scottish and Dutch settlers of New York.
Herman Melville was born on August 1, 1819, in New York City, New York, United States; the third of eight children of Allan and Maria Gansevoort Melville.
His father an "importer of French Goods and Commission Merchant" from New England, who traveled abroad, was a member of a substantial if colorful Boston family. The author's paternal grandfather, Major Thomas Melville, was honored as a participant in the Boston Tea Party. His mother came from an old, socially prominent New York Dutch family of the Hudson Valley. His maternal grandfather was General Peter Gansevoort, a hero of the Siege of Fort Schuyler; in his gold-laced uniform, the general sat for a portrait painted by Gilbert Stuart, which is described in Melville's 1852 novel, Pierre. His father died when Herman was just twelve and the family was left with no money or resources. His mother had expected some inherited wealth from her family but she did not receive it.
Education
Herman attended Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School and the New York Male High School. From October 1830 to October 1831 he was educated at the Albany Academy. Here, he studied classic literature and participated actively in student debates. He also developed an interest in writing during this period. The future author's studies at the Albany Academy terminated with his father's death. Thereafter, he was largely self-educated.
At the beginning of his career, Herman Melville tried various occupations - bank clerk, clerk in the family business, country schoolmaster - and he studied surveying before becoming a sailor. Melville's roving disposition and a desire to support himself led him to seek work as a surveyor on the Erie Canal. This effort failed, and his older brother helped him get a job as a "boy" (a green hand) on a New York ship bound for Liverpool. This voyage was the source for Redburn (1849).
In late 1840, he decided to sign up for more work at sea. Then he sailed from Fairhaven, Massachusetts on the whaler Acushnet, which was bound for the Pacific Ocean. He was later to comment that his life began that day. The vessel sailed around Cape Horn and traveled to the South Pacific. Melville left little direct accounts of the events of this 18-month voyage, although his whaling romance, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, probably describes many aspects of life on board the Acushnet. For three weeks he lived among the Typee natives, who were called cannibals by the two other tribal groups on the island - though they treated Melville very well. The result of such an experience was his work Typee (1846). It found a receptive audience and admitted Melville into the New York literary circles. A successful sequel, Omoo (1847), which paralleled Melville's experiences as a beachcomber in Tahiti, encouraged his belief that he could support himself through his writing. Melville's final novel of the South Seas is Mardi (1849).
Melville's book White-Jacket (1850) was written after his time with the crew of the frigate USS United States. In 1851 Melville wrote that he was well along with "a strange sort of book" on whaling - Moby-Dick. The novel appeared in England on October 18, 1851 as The Whale and on November 14 in America where it was published as Moby-Dick. Unfortunately, the novel was not well received and it marked a turn in Melville's fortunes.
After the disappointment of Moby Dick's reception, Melville faced a battle against obscurity and financial ruin for the remainder of his life. In 1852, he wrote Pierre, a psychological romance based on his own childhood, but a negative critical reception and a poor sales performance cost him a significant amount of his savings. He turned to short pieces and poetry, publishing several pieces in Putnam's Monthly Magazine from 1853 to 1854. The general public ignored his short novel Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855), and Melville entered a period of darkness and depression.
A trip to Europe to visit his friend Hawthorne in October 1856 did little to lighten his melancholy over a lost dream of literary fame. He toured the country from 1857 to 1860, giving lectures on various topics such as "Statues in Rome," "The South Seas," and the vague subject of "Traveling." In 1863, Melville moved back to New York City where he later found a job as a customs inspector on the New York docks.
Throughout his following 20 years as a dock worker, Melville continued writing, publishing the poem Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War in 1866. The chronological piece included depictions of all types of soldiers from both sides of the war, rendered accurately from a trip to the war front to visit his cousin the year before. Despite being considered among the best poems of the 19th century, Battle-Pieces sold a meager 486 copies.
Further heartache befell Melville when his oldest son, Malcolm, committed suicide in 1867. Again Melville turned to travel to gain perspective and possible writing material. His 1876 poem Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land drew upon his experiences in Europe and the Holy Land and set a baseline for a theme of religious crisis. Melville continued to pen poetry throughout these later years, printing John Marr and Other Sailors privately for friends and family in 1888. Melville was working on the manuscript of Billy Budd, Foretopman, a story about a sailor falsely accused of involvement in mutiny, when he died of a heart attack on September 28, 1891.
Herman Melville is particularly known as the author of the novel Moby-Dick which is considered his magnum opus. Poorly received during his lifetime, Moby-Dick was recognized as one of the greatest pieces of American literature in the 1920s. Today, Moby Dick is a staple of many high school curriculum reading lists, and a 1956 film version by John Huston introduced the story into popular culture. Melville's work Billy Budd is also among the most celebrated ones. It was adopted on screen for Broadway in 1951 and won the Donaldson Awards and Outer Critics Circle Awards for best play.
In 1985, the New York City Herman Melville Society gathered at 104 East 26th Street to dedicate the intersection of Park Avenue south and 26th Street as Herman Melville Square. This is the street where Melville lived from 1863 to 1891 and where, among other works, he wrote Billy Budd.
In 2010, a species of extinct giant sperm whale, Livyatan melvillei, was named in honor of Melville. The paleontologists who discovered the fossil were fans of Moby-Dick and dedicated their discovery to the author. Melville Hall, the Commissioned Officer's Club at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, in Kings Point, New York is named in his honor.
In Herman Melville's Religious Journey (1998), Walter Donald Kring detailed his discovery of letters indicating that Melville had been a member of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City. Until this revelation, little had been known of his religious affiliation. Hershel Parker, in the second volume (2002) of his biography of the writer, says that Melville became a nominal member only to placate his wife. Parker wrote that Melville despised Unitarianism and its associated "ism", Utilitarianism. While in Hawaii, he became a controversial figure for his vehement opposition to the activities of Christian missionaries seeking to convert the indigenous Hawaiian population.
Politics
Although Herman Melville was known to never vote, he held tenaciously to his socio-political opinions. Melville was a private man, which makes it difficult for researchers to specifically define his own political ideology. It is known, however, that he and his family were Democrats and supported the Union. While he had great respect for Southerners, he disagreed with slavery and unjust treatment of others. He strongly opposed Republican views. The Civil War affected more than just his political ideals.
Views
Through his works, Herman Melville expresses his philosophical views on the nature of good and evil. He uses a wide variety of tools, such as religious allusions, symbolism, and carefully chosen diction to illustrate these views. However, Melville’s opinions are often shrouded in ambiguity, as the meanings of his symbols are seen differently by the characters who interpret them, depending on their background and beliefs. Also, in any attempt made on a character’s part to destroy a force which they see as evil, the endeavor invariably leads to tragedy. Therefore, Melville puts forth the view that good and evil are illusions, created by society and interpreted by individuals, and that to destroy an aspect of ourselves deemed evil by society will ultimately end in utter destruction. Herman Melville attempts to analyze all aspects of nature and its relevance to human life. He explores the powers and influences of nature over mankind. Melville centers his point of view upon mankind in conflict with nature's forces.
Quotations:
"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing."
"A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities."
"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."
"I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one."
"Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian."
"It is not down on any map; true places never are."
"As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts."
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed."
"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own."
"I try all things, I achieve what I can."
"Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."
Membership
In 1889 Melville became a member of the New York Society Library.
New York Society Library
,
United States
1889
Interests
art, Christian theology, everything connected with sea
Politicians
General George Brinton McClellan, General Morgan Dix
Writers
William Shakespeare
Artists
Salvator Rosa
Connections
On August 4, 1847 Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, a daughter of Lemuel Shaw, the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The couple honeymooned in Canada and then moved into a house on Fourth avenue in New York City. In 1850, the couple moved to Massachusetts. They eventually had four children: two sons and two daughters.
As his professional fortunes waned, Melville had difficulties at home. Elizabeth's relatives repeatedly urged her to leave him, and offered to have him committed as insane, but she refused.
In 1867, his oldest son, Malcolm, shot himself, perhaps accidentally. While Melville had his steady customs job, his wife managed to wean him off alcohol. He no longer showed signs of agitation or insanity. But depression recurred after the death of his second son, Stanwix, in San Francisco early in 1886.
Father:
Allan Melville
(1782–1832)
Mother:
Maria Gansevoort Melville
Maria Gansevoort Melville (1791-1872) was the sixth and last child - and the only daughter of Peter Gansevoort and Catherine Van Schaick Gansevoort. In 1814 in Boston, she married Allan Melville and became to live with him comfortably in New York City. The couple had 4 sons and 4 daughters.
Wife:
Elizabeth Knapp Shaw
(1822–1906)
Son:
Malcolm Melville
(1849-1867)
Malcolm Melville worked for marine insurance company for 200$ a year (beginning 1866). Then he joined infantry unit of the New York State National Guard (1867). He was proud of his uniform and had a pistol. On the night of 10 - 11 September 1867 he was found in his room dead of self-inflicted gunshot wound in the head.
Herman Melville: A Biography
A book by Leon Howard seeks to uncover the mind and life of Melville in a historical, intellectual, and literary context.
1951
The Value of Herman Melville
In The Value of Herman Melville, Geoffrey Sanborn presents Melville to us neither as a somber purveyor of dark truths nor as an ironist who has outthought us in advance but as a quasi-maternal provider, a writer who wants more than anything else to supply us with the means of enriching our experiences.
2018
Herman Melville: A Half-Known Life
Herman Melville: A Half-Known Life, Volumes 1 and 2, follows Herman Melville’s life from early childhood to his astonishing emergence as a bestselling novelist with the publication of Typee in 1846. These volumes comprise the first half of a comprehensive biography on Melville, grounded in archival research, new scholarship, and incisive critical readings. Author John Bryant, a distinguished Melville scholar, editor, critic, and educator, traces the events and experiences that shaped the many-stranded consciousness of one of literature’s greatest writers.
