Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, writer

of short stories, and poet from theAmerican Renaissance period. The bulk of his writings was
published between 1846 and 1857. Best known for his sea adventureTypee (1846) and his
whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851), he was almost forgotten during the last thirty years of his
life. Melville's writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of
literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a
period of rapid change. Melville's way of adapting what he read for his own new purposes,
scholar Stanley T. Williams wrote, "was a transforming power comparable to Shakespeare's".
[1]

Born in New York City, he was the third child of a merchant in French dry-goods who went
bankrupt. After the death of his father in 1832, his formal education stopped abruptly and the
young man briefly became a schoolteacher. He then signed on as a common sailor for a
merchant voyage to Liverpool in 1839. A year and a half into his first whaling voyage, in
1842 he jumped ship in theMarquesas Islands, where he lived among the natives for a up to a
month. He described these experiences in his first book, Typee(1846), a best-seller, as was the
sequel, Omoo (1847). The same year Melville married Elizabeth Knapp Shaw; their four
children were all born between 1849 and 1855.
In August 1850, Melville moved to a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he
established a profound but short-lived friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne. MobyDick (1851) was not welcomed by readers or reviewers, and the cool reception
of Pierre (1852) put an end to his career as a popular author. From 1853 to 1856 he wrote
short fiction for magazines, collected as The Piazza Tales(1856). In 1857, Melville voyaged to
England and the Near East and The Confidence-Man appeared, the last prose work published
during his lifetime. From then on Melville turned to poetry. Having secured a position of
Customs Inspector in New York, his poetic reflection on the Civil War appeared as BattlePieces and Aspects of the War (1866).
In 1867 his oldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. The epic
poem Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876) drew upon Melville's
experience in Egypt and Palestine from twenty years earlier to meditate on religious
experience. In 1886 he retired as Customs Inspector and privately published two volumes of
poetry in small editions. During the last years of his life, interest in him was reviving, but his
death in 1891 from cardiovascular disease subdued the revival. In his final years he had been
working on the manuscript of Billy Budd, Sailor, which was left unfinished at his death and
published only in 1924. In the 1920s a "Melville" revival led to eventual appreciation of his
writings as world classics.
Biography[edit]
Early life[edit]
Born Herman Melvill [a] in New York City on August 1, 1819,[3] to Allan Melvill (17821832)
[4]
and Maria Gansevoort Melvill (17911872), Herman was the third of eight children born
between 1815 and 1830.[b] Part of a well-established and colorful Boston family, Melville's
1

father, Allan, spent a good deal of time abroad as a commission merchant and an importer of
French dry goods.
Both Melville's grandfathers were heroes of the Revolutionary War. Major Thomas
Melvill (17511832) had taken part in the Boston Tea Party,[5] and his maternal grandfather,
General Peter Gansevoort (17491812), was famous for having commanded the defense
of Fort Stanwix in 1777.[6] Melville found satisfaction in his "double revolutionary descent".
[7]
Major Melvill sent Allan not to college but to France at the turn of the century, where he
spent two years in Paris and learned to speak and write French fluently.[8] He subscribed to his
own father's Unitarianism. The wife he married in 1814, Maria Gansevoort Melvill, was
committed to the Dutch Reformed version of the Calvinist creed that had ruled in her family.
The severe Protestantism of the Gansevoort's tradition ensured that she knew her Bible well,
in English as well as Dutch,[c] the language she had grown up speaking with her parents.
Almost three weeks after his birth, on August 19, Melville was baptized at home by a
Reverend of the South Reformed Dutch Church. [9]During the 1820s Melville lived a
privileged, opulent life, in a household with three or more servants at a time. [10] Once in every
four years the family moved to more spacious and prestigious quarters, all the way to
Broadway in 1828.[11] Allan Melvill lived beyond his means and on large sums he borrowed
from both his father and his wife's widowed mother. His wife's opinion of his financial
conduct is unknown. Biographer Hershel Parker suggests Maria "thought her mother's money
was infinite and that she was entitled to much of her portion now, while she had small
children."[11] How well, biographer Delbanco adds, the parents managed to hide the truth from
their children is "impossible to know."[12] Things came to a halt in 1830 when Maria's family
finally had enough, at which point Allan's total debt to both families exceeded $20,000,-.[13]
Melville's education began when he was five years old, around the time the Melvills moved to
a newly built house at 33 Bleecker Street. [14]In 1826, the same year that Melville
contracted scarlet fever, Allan Melvill, who sent both Gansevoort and Herman to the New
York Male High School, described Melville in a letter to Peter Gansevoort Jr. as "very
backwards in speech & somewhat slow in comprehension". [15][16] His older brother Gansevoort
appeared to be the brightest of the children, but soon Melville's development increased its
pace. "You will be as much surprised as myself to know," Allan wrote Peter Gansevoort Jr.,
"that Herman proved the best Speaker in the introductory Department, at the examination of
the High School, he has made rapid progress during the 2 last quarters." [17][18] In 1829 both
Gansevoort and Herman were transferred to Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, with
Herman enrolling in the English Department on 28 September.[17] "Herman I think is making
more progress than formerly," Allan wrote in May 1830 to Major Melvill & without being a
bright Scholar, he maintains a respectable standing, & would proceed further, if he could only
be induced to study more - being a most amiable & innocent child, I cannot find it in my heart
to coerce him."[19]
Emotionally unstable and behind with paying the rent for the house on Broadway, Allan tried
to recover from his setbacks by moving his family to Albany in 1830 and going into the fur
business.[20] In Albany, Melville attended the Albany Academy from October 1830 to October
1831, where he took the standard preparatory course, studying reading and spelling;
penmanship; arithmetic; English grammar; geography; natural history; universal, Greek,
Roman and English history; classical biography; and Jewish antiquities.[21] It is unknown why
he left the Academy in October 1831'Parker suggests that by then "even the tiny tuition fee
seemed too much to pay."[22]His brothers Gansevoort and Allan continued their attendance a
few months longer, Gansevoort until March the next year.[22] "The ubiquitous classical
references in Melville's published writings", as Melville scholar Merton Sealts observed,
"suggest that his study of ancient history, biography, and literature during his school days left

a lasting impression on both his thought and his art, as did his almost encyclopedic knowledge
of both the Old and the New Testaments".[23]
In December Melville's father Allan returned from New York City by steamboat, but ice
forced him to travel the last seventy miles for two days and two nights in an open horse
carriage at two degrees below zero, with the result that he developed a cold. [24] In early
January he began to show "signs of delirium"[25] and his situation grew worse until he - in the
words of his wife - "by reason of severe suffering was deprive'd of his Intellect." [26] Two
months before reaching fifty, Allan Melvill died on 28 January 1832. [27] Since Melville was no
longer attending school, he must have witnessed these scenes: twenty years later he described
such a death of Pierre's father in Pierre (bk. 4 ch. 2).[28]
1832-1838: After father's death[edit]
Two months after his father's death, Gansevoort entered the cap and fur business and Maria
sought consolation in her faith, and in April she was admitted as a member of the First
Reformed Dutch Church.[29] Uncle Peter Gansevoort, who was one of the directors of the New
York State Bank, got Herman a job as clerk for $150 a year.[30] The issue of his emotional
response to all the dramas in his young life, is a question biographers answer by citing
from Redburn: "I had learned to think much and bitterly before my time," the narrator
remarks, "I must not think of those delightful days, before my father became a bankrupt...and
we removed from the city; for when I think of those days, something rises up in my throat and
almost strangles me."[12][30]
When Melville's grandfather Melvill died at on 16 September 1832, it turned out that Allan
had borrowed more than his share of the inheritance. He left Maria Melvill only $20. [31]The
widowed grandmother died on 12 April 1833.[32] Melville did his job well at the bank; though
he was only fourteen in 1834, the bank considered him competent enough to be sent over
to Schenectady on an errand. Not much else is known from this period, except that he was
very fond of drawing.[33] The visual arts became a lifelong interest.
Around May 1834 the Melvilles moved to another house in Albany, a three-story brick house.
[33]
According to biographer Hershel Parker, that same month a fire destroyed Gansevoort's
skin-preparing factory, which left him with personnel he could neither use nor afford
anymore. Instead he pulled Melville out of the bank to man the cap and fur store.
[33]
Presenting a different sequence of events, biographer Andrew Delbanco says that
Gansevoort was doing so well he could hire his younger brother until a fire broke out, this
time in 1835 and destroying both factory and the store. [34] In any case, his older brother
Gansevoort served as a role model for Melville in various ways. In early 1834 Gansevoort had
become a member of the Albany's Young Men's Association for Mutual Improvement, and in
January 1835 Melville himself became a member as well.[35]
In 1835, while still working in the store, Melville enrolled in Albany Classical School.
Biographer Parker suggests that perhaps this could be afforded with Maria's part of the
proceeds from the sale of the estate of his maternal grandmother in March 1835. [36] In
September of the following year he was back in Albany Academy, in the Latin course. He also
joined debating societies, in an apparent effort to make up as much as he could for his missed
years of schooling. In this period he also became acquainted with Shakespeare's Macbeth at
least, and teased his sisters with a passage from the witch scenes.[37]
In March 1837 he was again withdrawn from Albanay Academy. Gansevoort's copies of John
Todd's Index Rerum, a blank book, more of a register, in which one could index remarkable
passages from books read, for easy retrieval. Printed was a sample entry: "Pequot, beautiful
description of the war with" with a short title reference to where in Benjamin Trumbull's A
Complete History of Connecticut (1797 or 1818) the description could be found. The two
surviving volumes are the best evidence for Melville's reading in this period, because there is
little doubt that Gansevoort's reading served him as a guide. The entries include books that
3

Melville later used for Moby-Dick and Clarel: "Parsees--of India--an excellent description of
their character, & religion & an account of their descent--East India Sketch Book p.
21."[38] Other entries are on Panther, the pirate's cabin and storm at sea from James Fenimore
Cooper's Red Rover, Saint-Saba.[39]
That April an economic crisis forced Gansevoort to file for bankruptcy and Uncle Thomas Jr.
secretly planned to leave Pittsfield, where he did not pay taxes on the farm. On June 5 Maria
informed the younger children that they had to move to some village where the rent was
cheaper than in Albany. Gansevoort became a Law student in New York City and Melville
took care of the farm while his Uncle was in Galena. That summer he decided to become a
schoolteacher. He got a position at Sikes District School near Lenox, where he taught some
thirty students of various ages, including his own.[40]
His term over he returned to his mother in 1838. In February he was elected president of the
Philo Logos Society, which Peter Gansevoort invited to move into Stanwix Hall for no rent.
Many chambers were vacant as a result of the economic crisis. In March 1838 Melville
published in the Albany Microscope two polemical letters about issues in the debating
societies he was engaged in, but it is not entirely clear what the polemic was about.
Biographers Leon Howard and Hershel Parker suggest that the real issue was the youthful
desire to exercise one's rhetoric skills in public, and the first appearance in print would have
been an exciting experience for all young men involved.[41]
In May the Melvilles moved to Lansingburgh, almost a dozen miles north of Albany, into a
rented house on the river in what is now Troy, at River Street and 114th. [42] The family's
retreat, in biographer Delbanco's words, was now complete: from the metropolis to a
provincial city to a village.[43] What Melville was doing after his term at Sikes ended until
November, or if he even had a job after that, remains a mystery. Apparently he courted a local
Lansingburgh girl sometime during the summer, but nothing else is known.[44]
On 7 November Melville arrived in Lansingburgh. Where he had come from is unknown. Five
days later he paid for a term at Lansingburgh Academy where he took a course in surveying
and engineering. In April 1839 Peter Gansevoort failed to get him a job at the Canal.[45]
First and attributed writings[edit]
Only weeks after he failed to find a job as an engineer, Melville--using the unresolved initials
L.A.V.--contributed "Fragments from a Writing Desk" to the Democratic Press and
Lansingburgh Advertiser, a weekly newspaper, which printed the piece in two installments,
the first on 4 May.[46] According to scholar Sealts, the heavy-handed allusions reveal his early
familiarity with the writings of William Shakespeare, John Milton, Walter Scott, Richard
Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, andThomas
Moore.[47] Biographer Parker calls the piece "characteristic Melvillean mood-stuff," and
considers its prose style "excessive enough to allow him to indulge his extravagances and just
enough overdone to allow him to deny that he was taking his style seriously." [48] Biographer
Delbanco finds the prose "overheated in the manner of Poe, with sexually charged echoes of
Byron and The Arabian Nights."[49]
18391844: Years at sea[edit]
On 31 May 1839 Gansevoort, then living in New York City, wrote that he was sure Melville
could get a job on a whaler or merchant vessel if he would come to Manhattan. On June 2
Melville arrived from Albany by boat.[50] He signed aboard the merchant ship St. Lawrence as
a "boy"[51] (a green hand) for a cruise from New York to Liverpool.
He returned on the same ship on the first of October, after five weeks in England. Redburn:
His First Voyage (1849) is partly based on his experiences of this journey. At least two of the
nine guide-books listed in chapter 30 had been part of Allan Melvill's library.[47] Melville
resumed teaching, now at Greenbush, New York, but left after one term. In the summer of
1840 his trip to Galena took place.[52]
4

From 1838 to 1847 he resided at what is now known as the Herman Melville
House in Lansingburgh, New York.[53] In late 1840 he decided to sign up for more work at sea.
On January 3, 1841, he sailed from Fairhaven, Massachusetts, on the whaler Acushnet,
[54]
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 few
direct accounts of the events of this 18-month voyage, although his whaling romance, MobyDick; or, The Whale, probably describes many aspects of life on board the Acushnet. Melville
deserted the Acushnet in the Marquesas Islands in July 1842.[55]
For three weeks he lived among the Typee natives, who were called cannibals by the two
other tribal groups on the islandthough they treated Melville very well. Typee, Melville's
first book, describes a brief love affair with a beautiful native girl, Fayaway, who generally
"wore the garb of Eden" and came to epitomize the guileless noble savage in the popular
imagination.
Melville did not seem to be concerned about the consequences of leaving the Acushnet. He
boarded an Australian whale ship, the Lucy Ann, bound for Tahiti; took part in a mutiny and
was briefly jailed in the native Calabooza Beretanee. After release, he spent several months
asbeachcomber and island rover ('omoo' in Tahitian), eventually crossing over to Moorea. He
signed articles on yet another whaler for a six-month cruise (November 1842 April 1843),
which terminated in Honolulu. After working as a clerk for four months, he joined the crew of
the frigateUSS United States, which reached Boston in October 1844. He drew from these
experiences in his books Typee, Omoo, and White-Jacket.
The encounter with the wide ocean, seemingly abandoned by God, led Melville to experience
a "metaphysical estrangement," Milder believes, and his social thought was influenced in two
ways by his specific adventures in the Pacific. First, by birth and breeding Melville belonged
to the genteel classes, but found himself not only placed among but also sympathizing with
the "disinherited commons." Second, his acquaintance with the cultures of Polynesia enabled
him to view the West from an outsider's perspective.[56]
1845-1850: Successful writer[edit]
Melville completed Typee in the summer of 1845, while living in Troy, New York. Though
based upon his own adventures, the book is not a strict autobiography, if only because
Melville's later experiences in Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands are worked into the narrative
as well. Neither is it a fictional romance. Instead, scholar Robert Milder calls Typee "an
appealing mixture of adventure, anecdote, ethnography, and social criticism presented with a
genial latitudinarianism that gave novelty to a South Sea idyll at once erotically suggestive
and romantically chaste."[56] After some difficulty in arranging publication,[57] he saw it first
published in 1846 in London, where it became an overnight bestseller. The Boston publisher
subsequently accepted Omoo sight unseen. Omoo is "a slighter but more professional
book."[58] Typee and Omoo gave Melville overnight renown as a writer and adventurer, and he
often entertained by telling stories to his admirers. As the writer and editor Nathaniel Parker
Willis wrote, "With his cigar and his Spanish eyes, he talks Typee and Omoo, just as you find
the flow of his delightful mind on paper". [57] These did not generate enough royalties to
support him financially, however.
On August 4, 1847, Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, 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. Melville wrote a long,
philosophical workMardi, an allegorical narrative that proved a disappointment for readers
who wanted another rollicking and exotic sea yarn. Actually the book began as another South
Sea story, but as he wrote Melville left that genre behind, first in favor of "a romance of the
narrator Taji and the lost maiden Yillah" and then "to an allegorical voyage of the philosopher
Babbalanja and his companions through the imaginary archipelago of Mardi."[58]
5

On 16 February the Melvilles' first child, Malcolm, was born, [59] which may have stirred
memories of his own father. The bankruptcy and death of Allan Melville, and Melville's own
youthful humiliations surface in Redburn (1849), "a story of outward adaptation and inner
impairment."[60] Melville based the book on his first sea voyage, of 1839 to Liverpool, just as
he drawn on his experiences of 1844 aboard the warship United States for WhiteJacket (1850).
In 1850, the Melvilles moved to Massachusetts. They had four children: two sons and two
daughters.
1850-1851: Hawthorne and Moby-Dick[edit]
At first Moby-Dick moved swiftly. In early May 1850 he wrote to Richard Henry Dana, also a
sea author, saying he was already "half way" done. In June he described the book to his
English publisher as "a romance of adventure, founded upon certain wild legends in the
Southern Sperm Whale Fisheries", and promised it would be done by the fall. Since the
manuscript for the book has not survived, it is impossible to know for sure its state at this
critical juncture. Over the next several months, Melville's plan for the book underwent a
radical transformation into what has been described as "the most ambitious book ever
conceived by an American writer".[61]
In September 1850 the Melvilles purchased Arrowhead, a farm house in Pittsfield,
Massachusetts. (It is now preserved as a house museum and has been designated a National
Historic Landmark). Here Melville and Elizabeth lived for 13 years. While living at
Arrowhead, Melville befriended the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived in nearby Lenox.
Melville wrote ten letters to Hawthorne, "all of them effusive, profound, deeply affectionate".
[62]
Melville was inspired and encouraged by his new relationship with Hawthorne[63]during the
period that he was writing Moby-Dick. He dedicated this new novel to Hawthorne, though
their friendship was to wane only a short time later.[64]
On 18 October The Whale was published in Britain in three volumes, and on 14
November Moby-Dick appeared in the United States as a single volume. In between these
dates, on 22 October, the Melvilles' second child, Stanwix, was born.[65]
1852-1857: Unsuccessful writer[edit]
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, a novel partly autobiographical and difficult in style, was not well
received. The New York Day Book on September 8, 1852, published a venomous attack
headlined "HERMAN MELVILLE CRAZY". The item, offered as a news story, reported,
A
critical
friend,
who
read
Melville's
last
book, Ambiguities, between
two steamboat accidents, told us that it appeared to be composed of the ravings and reveries
of a madman. We were somewhat startled at the remark, but still more at learning, a few days
after, that Melville was really supposed to be deranged, and that his friends were taking
measures to place him under treatment. We hope one of the earliest precautions will be to
keep him stringently secluded from pen and ink.[66]
On 22 May 1853 Elizabeth (Bessie) was born, the Melvilles' third child and first daughter, and
on or about that day Herman finished work on Isle of the Crossone relative wrote that 'The
Isle of the Cross' is almost a twin sister of the little one...." Herman traveled to New York, but
later wrote that publisher, Harper & Brothers, was "prevented" from publishing his
manuscript, presumed to be Isle of the Cross, which has been lost.[67]
Between 1853 and 1856, Melville published fourteen tales and sketches in Putnams
and Harpers magazines. In 1856 a selection of the short fiction, including Bartleby, the
Scrivener and Benito Cereno, was published as The Piazza Tales. The title story was
especially written for the collection as an introductory story. One of the magazine pieces was
a serialized book, Israel Potter, the narrative of a Revolutionary War veteran.
On 2 March 1855 Frances (Fanny) was born, the Melvilles' fourth child. [68] In this
period Israel Potter appeared as a book.
6

In late 1856 he made a six-month Grand Tour of the British Isles and the Mediterranean.
While in England, he spent three days with Hawthorne, who had taken an embassy position
there. At the seaside village of Southport, amid the sand dunes where they had stopped to
smoke cigars, they had a conversation which Hawthorne later described in his journal:
Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything
that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he 'pretty much made up his mind to be
annihilated'; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest
until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persistsand has persisted ever
since I knew him, and probably long beforein wandering to-and-fro over these deserts, as
dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe,
nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or
the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and
reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us.
[69]

Melville's subsequent visit to the Holy Land inspired his epic poem Clarel.[70][71]
On April 1, 1857, Melville published his last full-length novel, The Confidence-Man. This
novel, subtitled His Masquerade, has won general acclaim in modern times as a complex and
mysterious exploration of issues of fraud and honesty, identity and masquerade. But, when it
was published, it received reviews ranging from the bewildered to the denunciatory.[72]
1857-1876: Poet[edit]
To repair his faltering finances, Melville was advised by friends to enter what was, for others,
the lucrative field of lecturing. From 1857 to 1860, he spoke at lyceums, chiefly on Roman
statuary and sightseeing in Rome.[73] Melville's lectures, which mocked the pseudointellectualism of lyceum culture, were panned by contemporary audiences.[74]
Turning to poetry, he submitted collection of verse to a publisher in 1860, but it was not
accepted. In 1863 he and his wife resettled in New York City with their four children. As his
professional fortunes waned, Melville had difficulties at home. Elizabeth's relatives repeatedly
urged her to leave him under the belief that he may have been insane, but she refused.
After the end of the American Civil War, he published Battle Pieces and Aspects of the
War (1866), a collection of over 70 poems that has been described as "a polyphonic verse
journal of the conflict."[75] It was generally ignored by reviewers, who gave him at best
patronizingly favorable reviews. The volume did not sell well; of the Harper & Bros. printing
of 1200 copies, only 525 had been sold ten years later.[76] Uneven as a collection of individual
poems, "its achievement lies in the interplay of voices and moods throughout which Melville
patterns a shared historical experience into formative myth."[75]
In 1866 Melville's wife and her relatives used their influence to obtain a position for him as
customs inspector for the City of New York (a humble but adequately paying appointment).
He held the post for 19 years and won the reputation of being the only honest employee in a
notoriously corrupt institution.[77] In 1867 his oldest son Malcolm shot himself, perhaps
accidentally, and died at home.
But from 1866, his professional writing career can be said to have come to an end yet he
remained dedicated to his writing. Melville devoted years to "his autumnal masterpiece," [78] an
18,000-line epic poem entitled Clarel: A Poem and a Pilgrimage, inspired by his 1856 trip to
the Holy Land.[70][79] His uncle, Peter Gansevoort, by a bequest, paid for the publication of the
massive epic in 1876. The epic-length verse-narrative about a student's spiritual pilgrimage to
the Holy Land, was considered quite obscure, even in his own time. Among the longest single
poems in American literature, the book had an initial printing of 350 copies, but sales failed
miserably, and the unsold copies were burned when Melville was unable to afford to buy them
at cost. The critic Lewis Mumford found a copy of the poem in the New York Public
Library in 1925 "with its pages uncut"in other words, it had sat there unread for 50 years.[80]
7

Clarel is a narrative in 18,000 verse lines, featuring a young American student of divinity as
the title character. He travels to Jerusalem to renew his faith. One of the central characters,
Rolfe, is similar to Melville in his younger days, a seeker and adventurer. Scholars also agree
that the reclusive Vine is based on Hawthorne, who had died twelve years before.[78]
1877-1891: Final years[edit]
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. On 23 February 1886, Stanwix Melville died in San Francisco. [81] Melville retired
in 1886, after several of his wife's relatives died and left the couple legacies which Mrs.
Melville administered with skill and good fortune.
As English readers, pursuing the vogue for sea stories represented by such writers as G. A.
Henty, rediscovered Melville's novels in the late nineteenth century, the author had a modest
revival of popularity in England, though not in the United States. He wrote a series of poems,
with prose head notes, inspired by his early experiences at sea. He published them in two
collections, each issued in a tiny edition of 25 copies for his relatives and friends. Of these,
scholar Robert Milder calls John Marr and Other Poems (1888), "the finest of his late verse
collections,"[82] the other privately printed volume is Timoleon (1891).
Intrigued by one of these poems, he began to rework the headnote, expanding it first as a short
story and eventually as a novella. He worked on it on and off for several years, but when he
died in September 1891, the piece was unfinished. His widow Elizabeth added notes and
edited it, but the manuscript was not discovered until 1919, by Raymond Weaver, his first
biographer. He worked at transcribing and editing a full text, which he published in 1924
as Billy Budd, Sailor. It was an immediate critical success in England and soon one in the
United States. The authoritative version was published in 1962, after two scholars studied the
papers for several years.
Death[edit]
Melville died at his home in New York City early on the morning of September 28, 1891, at
age 72. The doctor listed "cardiac dilation" on the death certificate.[83] He was interred in
the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York. A common story recounts that his New
York Times obituary called him "Henry Melville", implying that he was unknown and
unappreciated at his time of death, but the story is not true. A later article was published on
October 6 in the same paper, referring to him as "the late Hiram Melville", but this appears to
have been a typesetting error.[84]
Writing style[edit]
Typee and Omoo were documentary adventures that called for a division of the narrative in
short chapters. Such compact organization bears the risk of fragmentation when applied to a
lengthy work such as Mardi, but with Redburn and White Jacket Melville had turned the short
chapter into an instrument of form and concentration, even to the point where the general line
of statement "is shaped to the measure of this unit."[85] A number of chapters of Moby-Dick are
no longer than two pages in standard editions, and an extreme example is Chapter 122,
consisting of a single paragraph of 36 words (including the thrice-repeated "Um, um, um.")
The skillful handling of chapters in Moby-Dick is one of the fullest developed Melvillean
signatures, and is a measure of "his manner of mastery as a writer," [86]Individual chapters have
become "a touchstone for appreciation of Melville's art and for explanation" of his themes.
[87]
In contrast, the chapters in Pierre, called Books, are divided into short numbered sections,
seemingly an "odd formal compromise" between Melville's natural length and his purpose to
write a regular romance that called for longer chapters. As satirical elements were introduced,
the chapter arrangement restores "some degree of organization and pace from the
chaos."[86] The usual chapter unit then reappears forIsrael Potter, The Confidence-Man and

even Clarel, but only becomes "a vital part in the whole creative achievement" again in the
juxtaposition of accents and of topics in Billy Budd.[86]
Melville's early works were "increasingly baroque" [88] in style, and with Moby-Dick Melville's
vocabulary had grown superabundant. Bezanson calls it an "immensely varied style." [88] Three
characteristic uses of language can be recognized. First, the exaggerated repetition of words,
as in the series "pitiable," "pity," "pitied," and "piteous" (Ch. 81, "The Pequod Meets the
Virgin"). A second typical device is the use of unusual adjective-noun combinations, as in
"concentrating brow" and "immaculate manliness" (Ch. 26, "Knights and Squires"). [89] A third
characteristic is the presence of a participial modifier to emphasize and to reinforce the
already established expectations of the reader, as the words "preluding" and "foreshadowing"
("so still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene...", "In this foreshadowing
interval...").[90] After the hyphenated compounds of Pierre, words and phrases became less
exploratory and less provocative. Instead of providing a lead "into possible meanings and
openings-out of the material at hand," the style now served "to crystallize governing
impressions." The diction no longer attracted attention to itself, except as an effort at exact
definition. The language reflects a "controlling intelligence, of right judgment and completed
understanding."[91] The sense of free inquiry and exploration which infused his earlier writing
and accounted for its "rare force and expansiveness," tended to give way to "static
enumeration." Added "seriousness of consideration" came at the cost of losing "pace and
momentum."[92] The verbal music and kinetic energy of Moby-Dick seem "relatively muted,
even withheld" in the later works.[92]
Melville's paragraphing, in his best work, is the virtuous result of "compactness of form and
free assembling of unanticipated further data," such as when the mysterious sperm whale is
compared with Exodus's invisibility of God's face in the final paragraph of Chapter 86 ("The
Tail").[93] Over time Melville's paragraphs became shorter as his sentences grew longer, until
he arrived at the "one-sentence paragraphing characteristic of his later prose." The opening
chapter of The Confidence-Man counts fifteen paragraphs, seven of which consist of only one,
elaborate, sentence, and four that have only two sentences. This contributes in large part,
Berthoff says, to the "remarkable narrative economy" ofBilly Budd.[94]
Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the
day of judgment, than for that city.
Matthew 10:15
I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Feegee that salted down a lean missionary in his
cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Feegee, I say, in
the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to
the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pat-de-foie-gras.
Melville paraphrases the Bible in "The Whale as a Dish," Moby-Dick Ch.65
In Nathalia Wright's view, Melville's sentences generally have a looseness of structure, easy to
use for devices as catalogue and allusion, parallel and refrain, proverb and allegory. The
length of his clauses may vary greatly, but the "torterous" writing in Pierre and The
Confidence-Man is there to convey feeling, not thought. Unlike Henry James, who was an
innovator of sentence ordering to render the subtlest nuances in thought, Melville made few
such innovations. His domain is the mainstream of English prose, with its rhythm and
simplicity influenced by the King James Bible.[95]
Another important characteristic of Melville's writing style is in its echoes and overtones.
[96]
Melville's imitation of certain distinct styles is responsible for this. His three most
important sources, in order, are the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton.[97] Scholar Nathalia
Wright has identified three stylistic categories of Biblical influence. [98] Actual quotation from
any of the sources is slight; only one sixths of his Biblical allusions can be qualified as such.
[99]

First, far more unmarked than acknowledged quotations occur, some favorites even numerous
times throughout his whole body of work, taking on the nature of refrains. Examples of this
idiom are the injunctions to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves, death on a pale
horse, the man of sorrows, the many mansions of heaven; proverbs as the hairs on our heads
are numbered, pride goes before a fall, the wages of sin is death; adverbs and pronouns as
verily, whoso, forasmuch as; phrases as come to pass, children's children, the fat of the land,
vanity of vanities, outer darkness, the apple of his eye, Ancient of Days, the rose of Sharon.
[100]

Second, there are paraphrases of individual and combined verses. Redburn's "Thou shalt not
lay stripes upon these Roman citizens" makes use of language of the Ten Commandments
in Ex.20,[d] and Pierre's inquiry of Lucy: "Loveth she me with the love past all
understanding?" combines John 21:15-17[e] and Philippians 4:7[f]
Third, certain Hebraisms are used, such as a succession of genitives ("all the waves of the
billows of the seas of the boisterous mob"), the cognate accusative ("I dreamed a dream,"
"Liverpool was created with the Creation"), and the parallel ("Closer home does it go than a
rammer; and fighting with steel is a play without ever an interlude"). Melville's style
seamlessly flows over into theme, because all these borrowings have an artistic purpose,
which is to suggest an appearance "larger and more significant than life" for characters and
themes that are "essentially simple and mundane."[101] The allusions suggest that beyond the
world of appearances another world exists, one that "exerts influence upon this world, and in
which ultimate truth resides." Moreover, the ancient background thus suggested for Melville's
narratives - ancient allusions being next in number to the Biblical ones - invests them "with a
certain timeless quality."[101]
A passage from Redburn (see quotebox) shows how all these different ways of alluding
interlock and result in a fabric texture of Biblical language, though there is very little direct
quotation.
The other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout before Columbus' time, was
found in the New; and the deep-sea land, that first struck these soundings, brought up the soil
of Earth's Paradise. Not a Paradise then, or now; but to be made so at God's good pleasure,
[g]
and in the fulness and mellowness of time.[h] The seed is sown, and the harvest must come;
and our children's children,[i] on the world's jubilee morning, shall all go with their sickles to
the reaping. Then shall the curse of Babel be revoked,[j] a new Pentecost come, and the
language they shall speak shall be the language of Britain.[k] Frenchmen, and Danes, and
Scots; and the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean,[l] and in theregions round about;
[m]
Italians, and Indians, and Moors; there shall appear unto them cloven tongues as of fire.[n]
The American melting pot described in Redburn's Biblical language, with Nathalia
Wright's glosses.[102]
In addition to this, Melville successfully imitates three Biblical strains: he sustains the
apocalyptic for a whole chapter of Mardi; the prophetic strain is a presence in Moby-Dick,
most notably in Father Mapple's sermon; and the tradition of the Psalms is imitated at length
in The Confidence-Man.
Melville's style seamlessly flows over into theme, because all these borrowings have an
artistic purpose, which is to suggest an appearance "larger and more significant than life" for
characters and themes that are "essentially simple and mundane." [101] The allusions suggest
that beyond the world of appearances another world exists, one that "exerts influence upon
this world, and in which ultimate truth resides." Moreover, the ancient background thus
suggested for Melville's narratives - ancient allusions being next in number to the Biblical
ones - invests them "with a certain timeless quality."[101]
Critical response[edit]
Contemporary criticism[edit]
10

Melville was not financially successful as a writer, having earned just over $10,000 for his
writing during his lifetime.[103] After his success with travelogues based on voyages to the
South Seas and stories based on misadventures in the merchant marine and navy, Melville's
popularity declined dramatically. By 1876, all of his books were out of print. [104] In the later
years of his life and during the years after his death, he was recognized, if at all, as a minor
figure in American literature.
Melville revival and Melville studies[edit]
A confluence of publishing events in the 1920s, now commonly called "the Melville Revival",
brought about a reassessment of his work. The two books generally considered most
important to the Revival were Raymond Weaver's 1921 biography Herman Melville: Man,
Mariner and Mystic and his 1924 edition of Melville's last manuscript, Billy Budd, which he
discovered unfinished among papers given to him by Melville's granddaughter. The other
works that helped fan the Revival flames were Carl Van Doren's The American
Novel(1921), D. H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), Carl Van
Vechten's essay in The Double Dealer (1922), and Lewis Mumford's biography, Herman
Melville: A Study of His Life and Vision (1929).[105]
Starting in the mid-1930s, the Yale University scholar Stanley T. Williams supervised more
than a dozen dissertations on Melville which were published as books. His students were
prominent in establishing Melville Studies as an academic field concerned with texts and
manuscripts, tracing Melville's influences and borrowings, and exploiting archives and local
publications.[106] Jay Leyda, better known for his work in film, spent more than a decade
gathering documents and records for the day by day Melville Log (1951). In the same
year Newton Arvin published the critical biography, Herman Melville, which won the
nonfiction National Book Award.
That year, the novella Billy Budd was adapted as an award-winning play on Broadway, and
premiered as an opera by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto on which the author E. M.
Forster collaborated. In 1962 Peter Ustinov wrote, directed and produced a film based on the
stage version, starring the young Terence Stamp and for which he took the role of Captain
Vere. All these works brought more attention to Melville.
In the 1960s, Northwestern University Press, in alliance with the Newberry Library and
the Modern Language Association, launched a project to edit and published reliable critical
texts of Melville's complete works, including unpublished poems, journals, and
correspondence. The aim of the editors was to present a text "as close as possible to the
author's intention as surviving evidence permits". The volumes have extensive appendices,
including textual variants from each of the editions published in Melville's lifetime, an
historical note on the publishing history and critical reception, and related documents. In
many cases, it was not possible to establish a "definitive text", but the edition supplies all
evidence available at the time. Since the texts were prepared with financial support from the
United States Department of Education, no royalties are charged, and they have been widely
reprinted.
The Melville Society[edit]
In 1945, The Melville Society was founded, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the study
of Melville's life and works. Between 1969 and 2003 it published 125 issues of Melville
Society Extracts, which are now freely available on the society's website. Since 1999 it
publishesLeviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, currently three issues a year, published by
Johns Hopkins university Press.
Melville's poetry[edit]
Melville did not publish poetry until late in life and his reputation as a poet was not high until
late in the 20th century.
11

Melville, says recent literary critic Lawrence Buell, is justly said to be nineteenth-century
Americas leading poet after Whitman andDickinson, yet his poetry remains largely unread
even by many Melvillians. True, Buell concedes, even more than most Victorian poets,
Melville turned to poetry as an instrument of meditation rather than for the sake of melody or
linguistic play. It is also true that he turned from fiction to poetry late in life. Yet he wrote
twice as much poetry as Dickinson and probably as many lines as Whitman, and he wrote
distinguished poetry for a quarter of a century, twice as long as his career publishing prose
narratives. The three novels of the 1850s which Melville worked on most seriously to present
his philosophical explorations, Moby-Dick, Pierre, and The Confidence Man, seem to make
the step to philosophical poetry a natural one rather than simply a consequence of commercial
failure.[107]
In 2000 the Melville scholar Elizabeth Renker wrote "a sea change in the reception of the
poems is incipient".[108] Some critics now place him as the first modernist poet in the United
States; others assert that his work more strongly suggests what today would be a postmodern
view.[109] Henry Chapin wrote in an introduction to John Marr and Other Poems, a collection
of Melville's poetry, "Melville's loveable freshness of personality is everywhere in evidence,
in the voice of a true poet". [110] The poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren was a leading
champion of Melville as a great American poet. Warren issued a selection of Melville's poetry
prefaced by an admiring critical essay. The poetry critic Helen Vendler remarked of Clarel :
"What it cost Melville to write this poem makes us pause, reading it. Alone, it is enough to
win him, as a poet, what he called 'the belated funeral flower of fame'".[111]
Gender studies revisionism[edit]
Although not the primary focus of Melville scholarship, there has been an emerging interest in
the role of gender and sexuality in some of his writings. [112][113][114] Some critics, particularly
those interested in gender studies, have explored the male-dominant social structures in
Melville's fiction.[115] For example, Alvin Sandberg claimed that the short story "The Paradise
of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" offers "an exploration of impotency, a portrayal of a
man retreating to an all-male childhood to avoid confrontation with sexual manhood", from
which the narrator engages in "congenial" digressions in heterogeneity.[116] In line with this
view, Warren Rosenberg argues the homosocial "Paradise of Bachelors" is shown to be
"superficial and sterile".[114]
David Harley Serlin observes in the second half of Melville's diptych, "The Tartarus of
Maids", the narrator gives voice to the oppressed women he observes:
As other scholars have noted, the "slave" image here has two clear connotations. One
describes the exploitation of the women's physical labor, and the other describes the
exploitation of the women's reproductive organs. Of course, as models of women's
oppression, the two are clearly intertwined.[117]
In the end he says that the narrator is never fully able to come to terms with the contrasting
masculine and feminine modalities.
Issues of sexuality have been observed in other works as well. Rosenberg notes Taji, in Mardi,
and the protagonist in Pierre "think they are saving young 'maidens in distress' (Yillah and
Isabel) out of the purest of reasons but both are also conscious of a lurking sexual motive".
[114]
When Taji kills the old priest holding Yillah captive, he says,
[R]emorse smote me hard; and like lightning I asked myself whether the death deed I had
done was sprung of virtuous motive, the rescuing of a captive from thrall, or whether beneath
the pretense I had engaged in this fatal affray for some other selfish purpose, the
companionship of a beautiful maid.[118]
In Pierre, the motive of the protagonist's sacrifice for Isabel is admitted: "womanly beauty
and not womanly ugliness invited him to champion the right".[119] Rosenberg argues,

12

This awareness of a double motive haunts both books and ultimately destroys their
protagonists who would not fully acknowledge the dark underside of their idealism. The
epistemological quest and the transcendental quest for love and belief are consequently sullied
by the erotic.[114]
Rosenberg says that Melville fully explores the theme of sexuality in his major epic
poem, Clarel. When the narrator is separated from Ruth, with whom he has fallen in love, he
is free to explore other sexual (and religious) possibilities before deciding at the end of the
poem to participate in the ritualistic order marriage represents. In the course of the poem, "he
considers every form of sexual orientation celibacy, homosexuality, hedonism, and
heterosexuality raising the same kinds of questions as when he considers Islam or
Democracy".[114]
Some passages and sections of Melville's works demonstrate his willingness to address all
forms of sexuality, including the homoerotic, in his works. Commonly noted examples
from Moby-Dick are the "marriage bed" episode involving Ishmael and Queequeg, which is
interpreted as male bonding; and the "Squeeze of the Hand" chapter, describing the
camaraderie of sailors' extracting spermaceti from a dead whale. [120] Rosenberg notes that
critics say that "Ahab's pursuit of the whale, which they suggest can be associated with the
feminine in its shape, mystery, and in its naturalness, represents the ultimate fusion of the
epistemological and sexual quest."[114] In addition, he notes that Billy Budd's physical
attractiveness is described in quasi-feminine terms: "As the Handsome Sailor, Billy Budd's
position aboard the seventy-four was something analogous to that of a rustic beauty
transplanted from the provinces and brought into competition with the highborn dames of the
court."[114]
Law and literature[edit]
In recent years, Billy Budd has become a central text in the field of legal scholarship known as
law and literature. In the novel, Billy, a handsome and popular young sailor is impressed from
the merchant vessel Rights of Man to serve aboard H.M.S. Bellipotent in the late 1790s,
during the war between Revolutionary France and Great Britain. He excites the enmity and
hatred of the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart. Claggart accuses Billy of phony charges of
mutiny and other crimes, and the Captain, the Honorable Edward Fairfax Vere, brings them
together for an informal inquiry. At this encounter, Billy strikes Claggart in frustration, as his
stammer prevents him from speaking. The blow catches Claggart squarely on the forehead
and, after a gasp or two, the master-at-arms dies.
Vere immediately convenes a court-martial, at which, after serving as sole witness and as
Billy's de facto counsel, Vere urges the court to convict and sentence Billy to death. The trial
is recounted in chapter 21, the longest chapter in the book. It has become the focus of
scholarly controversy; was Captain Vere a good man trapped by bad law, or did he
deliberately distort and misrepresent the applicable law to condemn Billy to death?[121]
Themes[edit]
Melville's characters are all preoccupied by the same intense, superhuman and eternal quest
for "the absolute amidst its relative manifestations." [122] According to scholar Nathalia Wright
there can be no doubt that this is the essence of every segment of Melville's whole body of
work: "All Melville's plots describe this pursuit, and all his themes represent the delicate and
shifting relationship between its truth and its illusion."[122] It is not clear, however, what the
moral and metaphysical implications of this quest are, because Melville did not distinguish
between these two aspects.[122] Throughout his life Melville struggled with and gave shape to
the same set of epistemological doubts and the metaphysical issues these doubts engendered.
An obsession for the limits of knowledge led to the question of God's existence and nature,
the indifference of the universe and the problem of evil.[58]
Legacy[edit]
13

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.[123]

In 2010 it was announced that a new species of extinct giant sperm whale, Livyatan
melvillei, was named in honor of Melville. The paleontologists who discovered the fossil
were all fans of Moby-Dick and decided to dedicate their discovery to the author.[124][125]
When Herman Melville died in 1891, his death was noted in only one local newspaper,
which carried a brief description of the "long forgotten" author. Not until the early
20th century was Melville's novel Moby Dick first recognized as a literary masterpiece
and touted as a cornerstone of modern American literature.
Born to a New York City merchant in 1819, Melville fought for a greatness that would
not be realized during his lifetime. Melville's father supported his seven children
importing French dry goods, but in 1830 he decided to try his luck in the fur business
in Albany, NY. Within two years, the family was bankrupt and Herman's father died
suddenly. Melville and his siblings left school to work in the family fur and cap
business, with Melville working several other jobs as well -- filling in teaching
positions at local schools, working on his uncle's farm, and clerking in a local bank.
Despite these difficulties, Herman Melville read extensively on his own, consuming
mythology, anthropology, and history. He was fascinated with Shakespeare's poetic
devices and their ability to capture an audience. He was also raised hearing the
thrilling story of the whaleship Essex, which was attacked by a whale and sunk when
Melville was just a year old. Melville's captivation with the terrifying grandeur of
whales, the audacity of whalers, and the relationship between the two would be a
motivating factor behind his writing.
In 1839, at the age of 20, Melville took his first voyage across the Atlantic sea as a
cabin boy on the merchant ship the St. Lawrence. After this expedition and a year
exploring the West, Melville joined the crew of the whaling ship Acushnet in January
of 1841. The thrilling adventure that occurred during the next three years would satiate
his desire for excitement and provide him with his material for his first three novels.
After a year and a half aboard the Acushnet, Melville and a fellow seaman deserted the
ship, only to be captured by cannibals in the Marquesas Islands, the Typee. Although
Melville was treated well, he sought rescue on the Australia whale ship Lucy
Ann when it arrive on the Marquesas a month after his capture. On the Lucy
Ann Melville traveled to Tahiti, where his unusual journey continued when he, along
with the crew, committed mutiny by refusing their duty. Briefly jailed, Melville
escaped and sailed to the nearby island Eimeo, where he worked on a potato farm.
More than five months after deserting the Acushnet, Melville's adventures were not
over. Tiring of life on Eimeo, he joined the crew of whaler Charles and Henry, where
he worked as harpooner. When theCharles and Henry anchored in Maui Island five
months later in April of 1843, Melville took up work as a clerk and bookkeeper in a
general store in Honolulu. In August, 1843, Melville enlisted in the US Navy and
embarked on the final leg of his journey, working as a seaman on the Navy
ship United Statesthrough the Pacific.
In October 1844, Melville returned to his mother's house determined to write about his
adventures. His subsequent writings borrowed from his own experiences as well as
other peoples' fantastic stories that he heard during his travels. Because of his
extensive experience as a seaman and a whaler, his descriptions of life out at sea were
comprehensive and unflinchingly accurate. Melville was also able to communicate the
14

fear and terror of a whale hunt, a feat that would make his greatest work, Moby Dick, a
literary tribute to the whaling industry.
His first manuscript, a tale in which the narrator, Tommo, is captured by Typee
cannibals, was initially rejected in the United States because publishers refused to
believe the validity of the story. The story was finally accepted in London, where
Melville's older brother, Gansevoort, was working for the American
Legation. Typee was published in Britain in February of 1846 to favorable reviews.
Lauded for its ethnographic focus exploring the relationship between a New Englander
and a foreign culture, Melville's story gained even more popularity after one of
Herman's former crewmates came forward to validate its factual base. This new basedon-a-true-story status coupled with Americans' high interest in maritime adventures,
helped Typee sell over 6,000 copies in two years when it was published in the U.S.
In the midst of his initial years as a profitable author, Melville married Elizabeth
Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of Massachusetts and a close family friend. The
chief justice, Lemuel Shaw, would later support Melville in the late 1850s during his
financial struggles. With his new bride, Melville moved to New York City to live with
his younger brother, mother, and four sisters in late 1847. Despite these crowded
quarters, Melville was able to continue writing, and he finished two more novels
within two years.
Encouraged by his success with Typee, Melville published Omoo in 1847, a story
inspired by his time in the Polynesian Islands of Tahini and Eimeo. Omoo was just as
successful as Typee, and Melville immediately began work on his third installment of
his maritime adventures, Mardi and a Voyage Thither. Published in 1849, Mardi was
not as successful as his previous two books, a fact credited largely to his increased use
of allegory and a more farfetched storyline.
From 1849 to 1850, Melville wrote two more novels, Redburn and White-Jacket, both
of which he later claimed to write simply for the money and the prestige. These
attempts to inflate his image as an author won him general acclaim and the novels
were modest hits. Melville moved on to his most prolific endeavor yet -- a story about
one man's need to conquer and kill a great white whale. Melville had first thought of
the idea after reading a 1839 article by Jeremiah N. Renolds entitled "Mocha Dick: Or,
the White Whale of the Pacific."
While he drafted what would become the novel Moby Dick, Melville met and
befriended Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had recently published the literary
masterpiece The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne provided Melville with precious feedback
on his manuscript, and encouraged him to change his current draft, a detailed account
of whaling, into an allegorical novel.
In October 1851, The Whale, printed later as Moby Dick, was published in London.
The allegorical undertones that Melville cultivated throughout the novel picked up on
the link between whaling and a mid-19th century emerging American identity. The
story centers around the narrator Ishmael, a sailor on the whaleship Pequod. The ship
captain, Ahab, has lost his leg to Moby Dick on a previous expedition, and he is
motivated to the point of derangement by revenge for the whale's life. Powered by this
plot, Melville's Moby Dick spun the parable of the hunt for the great white whale as an
emblem of the human condition and the reckless expansion of the American republic.
Despite Melville's high expectations for Moby Dick, literary critics largely disregarded
the novel. Many critics were impressed with the detailed account of whaling voyages,
but during Melville's entire lifetime, the book sold only 3,000 copies. Interest in

15

maritime adventures was dwindling as Americans were setting their imaginations

towards the potential in the West.
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.
A page in Melville's journal about meeting Capt. Pollard of the Essex
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.
In the 1920s, literary scholars began to identify Moby Dick as a work that commented
upon larger issues of the American experience in the 19th century. Critics increasingly
recognized Moby Dick as one of the greatest pieces of American literature, and they
began to discuss the allegorical implications at long last. The novel has been described
as both an allegory to the push west (the prairie being the sea) and the Gold Rush (the
gold being the whale), and it has been taught in classrooms worldwide for its
successful combination of philosophical speculation, Shakespearean rhetoric and
dramatic staging while moving an intelligent and authentic, albeit fantastic, plot.
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. In Moby
Dick and his other works, Melville was able to incorporate stories of adventure with
examinations of many inherently American themes: religion versus science, human
limitations and emerging technology, and truth versus American myth. The
ramifications that Americans can take from reading Melville center around the
immoral manifestation of the democratic ideal that Americans were facing during the
height of the whaling industry and one that we still battle with today

16