Herman Melville

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Herman Melville (born Melvill, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period.

Moby-Dick (1851), his masterpiece, and Typee (1846), a romantic chronicle of Polynesian life, are two of his best-known works. Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a merchant.

Omoo (1847), Typee's first book, was followed by a sequel.

Both were successful, and they gave him the opportunity to marry Elizabeth "Lizzie" Shaw, the daughter of a prominent Boston family.

Mardi (1849), his first book that wasn't based on his own experiences, was not well received.

Redburn (1849), his non-fiction White-Jacket (1850), and his fictional work Redburn (1850) received praise, but no budget guarantees were given. Moby-Dick (1851), although now known as one of the best American novels, was not well received by contemporary scholars.

Reviewers also scorned Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852).

Melville's short stories appeared in magazines from 1853 to 1856, as The Piazza Tales.

He went to England and then toured the Near East in 1857, and then published his last work of prose, The Confidence Man (1857).

In 1863, he moved to New York to work as a Customs Inspector and later turned to poetry.

His philosophical reflection on the moral issues of the American Civil War (1866) was Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866).

Malcolm's eldest child died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot in an emotionally traumatic experience for Melville in 1867.

Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876 within ten years of his son's death.

Stanwix, his other son, died of apparent tuberculosis in 1886, and Melville retired.

He privately published two volumes of poetry, left one volume unpublished, and returned to prose of the sea during his last years.

Billy Budd was unfinished at his death, but it was published posthumously in 1924.

Melville died of cardiovascular disease in 1891.

The centennial of his birth in 1919 was the spark of the "Melville Revival" as critics rediscovering his career and his major books becoming recognized as world classics of enduring relevance to contemporary world literature.

Family and early life

Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819, to Allan Melvill (1782–1832) and Maria (Gansevoort) Melvill (1791–1872). Herman was the third of eight children in a family of Scottish and Dutch descent. Gansevoort (1815–1885), Thomas (1820–1885), and Catherine (1821–1885), who later became governor of Sailors' Snug Harbor; he was a part of his career as well as his emotional life, were among his siblings. Allan Melvill, a member of a well-established and vibrant Boston family, spent considerable time in New York and Europe as a commission merchant and an importer of French dry goods.

Both of Melville's grandfathers were veterans of the Revolutionary War, and Melville found solace in his "double revolutionary descent." Major Thomas Melvill (1751–1832) had attended the Boston Tea Party, and Melville's maternal grandfather, General Peter Gansevoort (1749-1812), was known for commanding the defense of Fort Stanwix in New York in 1777. Major Melvill did not send his son Allan (Herman's father) to college, but rather sent him to France, where he spent two years in Paris and learned to speak French fluently. Maria Gansevoort, who had committed to her family's more strict and biblically oriented Calvinist creed, was born in 1814. Maria was well versed in the Bible, both in English and in Dutch, according to the language that the Gansevoorts used at home.

Herman Melville, a minister of the South Reformed Dutch Church, baptized him at home on August 19, nearly three weeks after his birth. Melville lived in a house of three or more servants at a time during the 1820s. The family grew to more spacious and elegant quarters over the four years, finally settling on Broadway in 1828. Allan Melvill lived beyond his means, on large sums borrowed from his father and widowed mother. Although his wife's opinion of his financial situation is uncertain, analyst Maria "thought her mother's money was infinite and that she was entitled to a significant share" when her children were young, according to biographer Hershel Parker. According to biographer Andrew Delbanco, how well parents managed to conceal the truth from their children is "impossible to know."

The Gansevoorts' financial assistance to the Melvilles ended in 1830, at a time when Allan's lack of financial stability put him in debt to both the Melvill and Gansevoort families for more than $20,000 (equivalent to $509,000 in 2021). But Melville's early childhood relying less on Allan's wealth or his profligate spending than on his "exceptionally tender and affectionate spirit in all family relationships, especially in the immediate circle," according to Newton Arvin, a Melville biographer. "A man of real sensibility and a particularly warm and loving father," Arvin says of Allan, who was "warmly maternal, simple, robust, and affectionately dedicated to her husband and her brood."

Herman Melville's education began when he was five years old and was suspended at age 12 as a result of his father's death at the age of 12. Herman and his older brother Gansevoort were admitted to the New York Male High School around the time the Melvills moved to a newly constructed house on 33 Bleecker Street in Manhattan in 1824. Allan Melvill described him as "very backwards in speech and a little slow in comprehending" at first, but his growth slowed and Allan was surprised that "Herman was the best Speaker in the introductory Department" in 1826, the year Herman contracted scarlet fever. Both Gansevoort and Herman were sent to Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in 1829, and Herman was accepted in the English Department on September 28. "I think this man is making more progress than ever," Allan wrote in May 1830 to Major Melvill, "and even if he were to continue studying more, he would continue to grow his reputation and will go further."

Herman's father tried to recover by moving his family to Albany, New York, in 1830, before going into the fur industry. Herman attended the Albany Academy from October 1830 to October 1831, where he took the standard preparatory course, studying reading and spelling; penmanship; English grammar; English grammar; natural history; universal, Greek, Roman, and English history; and Jewish antiquities. Herman marched in the Albany city government procession of the year's "finest scholars" in early August 1831 and was given a copy of The London Carcanet, a collection of poems and prose scribed to him as "the first best in ciphering books." Merton Sealts, a Melville scholar, noted that there are certain aspects of the visit to Merton Sealts.

Nevertheless, Melville's time at the Academy was soon to end. Parker argues that he abandoned it in October 1831 because "even the tiny tuition fee seemed too much to pay."

Allan Melvill returned from New York City by steamboat in December, but he had to travel the last seventy miles in an open carriage for two days and two nights in sub-freezing temperatures. He began to show "signs of delirium" in early January, and his situation got worse before his wife believed that his illness had stripped him of his intelligence. He died on January 28, 1832, two months before reaching his 50th birthday. These scenes occurred as Herman was no longer attending classes. In Pierre, he recalled a similar burial 20 years ago.

Several major changes in the family's financial and spiritual circumstances were triggered by Allan's death. One of the best results was his mother's religious convictions. Maria sought consolation in her faith and was accepted as a member of the First Reformed Dutch Church in April. Herman's orthodox Calvinism synthesis was certainly the most influential academic and spiritual influence of his youth. Gansevoort began selling cap and fur two months after his father's death. Uncle Peter Gansevoort, a director of the New York State Bank, gave Herman a job as clerk for $150 a year (equivalent to $4,100 in 2021). "I must not think of those glorious days, before my father became a bankrupt and we removed from the area," biographers cite when trying to figure out what Herman must have felt then. One must deal with "psychology, the tormented psychology of the defunct patrician," Melville says.

Maria and her children learned Allan, who had borrowed more than half of his inheritance, when Melville's paternal grandfather died on September 16, 1832, the equivalent to $500 in 2021). His paternal grandmother died just over seven months later. Melville did his jobs at the bank, although the bank considered him fit enough to be sent to Schenectady, New York, on an errand. Except for the fact that he was so keen on drawing, not much else is known about this period. The visual arts have long been a lifelong passion. The Melvilles moved to a new house in Albany, a three-story brick house, around May 1834. Gansevoort's skin-preparing factory was destroyed by a fire in the same month, leaving him with a staff he couldn't use nor afford. Instead, he took Melville out of the bank to run the cap and fur store.

Melville, who was still working in the store in 1835, enrolled in Albany Classical School, perhaps using Maria's share of the funds earned by the auction of his maternal grandmother's estate in March 1835. Herman had been back in Albany Academy in the Latin course in September of the following year. In an apparent effort to make up as much as he could for his missing years of education, he also participated in debating societies. At least Macbeth, whose witch scenes gave him the opportunity to teasingly scare his sisters, he read Shakespeare during this period. He was also expelled from Albany Academy by March 1837.

Gansevoort was a role model and advocate for Melville throughout his life, particularly during the time when trying to cobble together an education. Gansevoort had been a member of Albany's Young Men's Association for Mutual Improvement in early 1834, and Melville joined him in January 1835. In addition, Gansevoort had copies of John Todd's Index Rerum, a blank register for indexing interesting passages from books that one had read for quick retrieval. "Pequot, beautiful description of the war with," was one of Gansevoort's sample entries demonstrating his academic zealousness, with a brief mention of the location where the description could be found in Benjamin Trumbull's A Complete History of Connecticut (1797, Vol. I in 1797, and Volume II in 1818) where the photograph could be found. Melville's reading in this period is shown by two remaining volumes of Gansevoort's books. "Parsees—of India—an excellent summary of their character, faith, and an account of their descent—Mensevoort's entries include books such as "Parise—of India," a fantastic summary of their life, as well as an account of their descent—East India Sketch Book p. 21." Other entries include Panther, the pirate's cabin, and a storm off the coast of Saint-Saba by James Fenimore Cooper's The Red Rover.

Gansevoort was forced to file for bankruptcy in April due to the Panic of 1837. Maria told the younger children that they should leave Albany for somewhere cheaper in June. Gansevoort began learning law in New York City while Herman was in charge of the farm before being accepted as a tutor at Lenox, Massachusetts. He taught about 30 students of various ages, some of whom were younger than him.

He returned to his mother in 1838, but the semester was over. He was elected president of the Philo Logos Society in February, and Peter Gansevoort was invited to move into Stanwix Hall for no money. Melville wrote two opportune letters about issues in vogue in the debating societies in the Albany Microscope in March. According to historians Leon Howard and Hershel Parker, the motivation behind the letters was a youthful desire to have his rhetorical skills publicly recognized. The Melvilles moved to a rented house in Lansingburgh, just over 12 miles north of Albany, in May. Melville did not do or where he went for several months after finishing teaching at Sikes. Melville agreed to study surveying and engineering five days after arriving in Lansingburgh. Peter Gansevoort's letter in April 1839 recommending Herman for a career in the Erie Canal's Engineer Department says he "has the desire to make himself useful in a field in which he wishes to work" but no work was achieved.

Melville's first known published essay appeared just weeks after this disaster. L.A.V., the initials, is used in this case. "Herman contributed "Fragments From a Writing Desk" to the weekly newspaper Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser, which then printed it in two installments, the first on May 4th. According to Merton Sealts, his use of heavy-handed allusions shows a familiarity with William Shakespeare's, John Milton, Walter Scott, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke, Thomas Moore, and Thomas Moore. Parker calls the piece "characteristic Melvillean mood-stuff" and says the style is "excessive enough [...] to indulge his extravagances while still having to deny that he was serious about his style. The style of Delbanco is "overheated in the manner of Poe," with sexually charged echoes of Byron and The Arabian Nights.

Gansevoort, a New York City man, wrote on May 31, 1839, that he was certain Herman would work on a whale or merchant ship. He hopped aboard the merchant ship St. Lawrence as a "boy" (a green hand), which sailed from New York to Liverpool the next day. Redburn: His First Voyage (1849) chronicles his experience during the voyage; at least two of the nine guide-books in chapter 30 of the book were part of Allan Melvill's library. He returned to New York on October 1, 1839 and restarted teaching, now in Greenbush, New York, but after one term because he hadn't been paid, he was suspended. In the summer of 1840, he and his colleague James Murdock Fly travelled to Galena, Illinois, to see if Uncle Thomas would be able to assist them in finding jobs. If he and his companion were unsatisfied, they returned home in fall, presumably via St. Louis and the Ohio River.

In the May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker magazine, Mocha Dick, Herman, and Gansevoort's account, Herman signed up for a whaling voyage aboard a new ship, the Acushnet, inspired by contemporaneous popular cultural reading, including Richard Henry Dana Jr.'s book Two Years Before the Mast and Jeremiah N. Reynolds' biography. The ship was built in 1840 and measured 104 feet in length, almost 28 feet in breadth, and almost 14 feet in depth. She weighed in at less than 360 pounds and had two decks and three masts, but no quarter galleries were available. Melvin O. Bradford and Philemon Fuller of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, were berthed near their office on the foot of downtown in that town. On Christmas Day, Herman signed a "green hand" with the ship's agent for 1/175th of whatever money the voyage would have earned. The brothers heard Reverend Enoch Mudge preach at the Seamen's Bethel on Sunday, where white marble cenotaphs on the walls commemorated local sailors who had died at sea, often in war against whales. Herman was charged $84 when he ordered the crew list the next day.

The Acushnet set sail on January 3, 1841. Melville's sleeping quarters with some twenty others; Captain Valentine Pease, the mates; and the skilled men slept aft. Whales were found in the Bahamas, and Rio de Janeiro sent 150 barrels of oil home in March. A single whale took about three days to get into and out (boiling), and a whale yielded about one barrel of oil per foot of length and per ton of weight (the average whale weighed 40 to 60 tons). The oil was held on deck for a day to cool, and was then stowed down; scrubbing the deck completed the job. On an average voyage, forty whales were killed, yielding about 1600 barrels of oil.

The Acushnet sailed around Cape Horn on April 15 and into the South Pacific, where the crew spotted whales without catching them. She continued up the coast of Chile to Selkirk Island, where she found 160 barrels on May 7, just off the coast of Juan Fernández Islands. In Santa Harbor on June 23, the ship anchored for the first time since Rio. The Acushnet's cruising grounds attracted a lot of attention, and Captain Pease not only stopped to visit other whales but also hunted in company with them at certain times. The Acushnet largely admired the Lima from Nantucket from July 23 to August, and Melville met William Henry Chase, the uncle of Owen Chase, who gave him a copy of his father's account of his voyages on the Essex. "The reading of this wondrous tale about the landless sea, & close to the shipwreck's latitude" was a "surprising effect on me."

The ship reported having 600 barrels of oil to another whaler on September 25, and that in October, 700 barrels. The Acushnet crossed the equator to the north on October 24, and six or seven days later, it landed on the Galápagos Islands. This short visit will be the basis for "The Encantadas." The Acushnet and three other American whalers were hunting together near the Galápagos Islands on November 2, and Melville later exaggerated the number in Sketch Fourth of "The Encantadas." From November 19 to 25, the ship anchored at Chatham's Isle and anchored in Tombez near Paita on December 2 with 570 barrels of oil on board. On December 27, the Acushnet sighted Cape Blanco off the coast of Ecuador. Point St. Elena was sighted the next day, and the ship sailed from the southeast to the Galápagos Islands on January 6, 1842. Seven sightings of sperm whales were recorded between February 13 and 7, but none of them was killed. The Acushnet crew set about its whaling efforts with the Columbus of New Bedford, which also took letters from Melville's ship; the two ships were in the same area just south of the Equator from early May to early June. On June 16, the Acushnet carried 750 barrels of oil and sent 200 home 200 on the Herald the Second, and on June 23, she landed in Nuku Hiva and anchored the Marquesas Islands.

Melville and his shipmate Richard Tobias Greene ("Toby") jumped ship at Nuku Hiva Bay in the summer of 1842. Typee (1846), Melville's first book, is based on his stay in or near the Taipi Valley. Melville had left the island by mid-August aboard the Australian whaler Lucy Ann, heading for Tahiti, where he was involved in a mutiny and was briefly imprisoned in the native Calabooza Betanee. He and his crewmate John B. were on the docket in October. Troy left Tahiti for Eimeo. He spent a month as a beachcomber and island rover in Tahitian (omoo), before heading over to Moorea. He drew from Omoo, the sequel to Typee. He contracted to be a seaman on the Nantucket whaler Charles & Henry for a six-month voyage in November 1842-April 1843) and was discharged in Maui's Lahaina, Maui, in May 1843.

Melville, who had been on several jobs in Hawaii, including as a clerk, joined the US Navy on August 20 as an ordinary seaman on the frigate USS United States. The homeward bound ship toured the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, and Valparaiso, in Tahiti, Tahiti, and Valparaiso, and then, from summer to fall 1844, Mazatlan, Lima, and Rio de Janeiro before arriving in Boston on October 3. On October 14, Melville was dismissed. In White-Jacket (1850), Melville's fifth book, this Navy experience is used.

Melville's wandering years developed "a persistent fear of external control," a craving for personal rights, and a "incrementing sense of his own exceptionalism as a person," as well as "the resentful belief that circumstance and humanity have already imposed their will on him in a sequence of injurious ways." Melville was inspired by God's "disinherited commons" and influenced his social views in two ways, according to scholar Robert Milder, who was first introduced to the genteel classes but second that experiencing the West gave him a "metaphysical outlook."

Melville regaled his family and friends with his thrilling tales and romantic encounters, and his family and friends were encouraged to write them. While living in Troy, New York, Melville wrote Typee, his first book, in the summer of 1845. Gansevoort's brother, who died in London, has found a publisher for it, where it was first published in February 1846 by John Murray in his travelogue collection. It became an overnight bestseller in England and then in New York when Wiley & Putnam was published on March 17 in New York.

Melville's story continued the period of time he had spent on the island while still including information from source books he had assembled. Typee, Milder, is described as "an exciting blend of adventure, anecdote, ethnography, and social commentary presented with a vivacious latitudinarianism that gave a South Sea idyll at once erotically suggestive and romantically chaste."

Hawthorne continued:

Melville later expressed fear that he would "go down to posterity" as a "man who lived among the cannibals," despite being overwhelmed by the adulation of his new public. Melville's writing brought him right into contact with his brother Greene—Toby in the book—who wrote about Melville's appearance in journals. Melville traced and successfully located his old friend" in his final years until 1863, and the two remained in contact until 1863. Omoo, a sequel to Typee, was published by Murray in London in March 1847, and Harper in New York in May. Milder says Omoo is "a little bit more professional book." Melville earned his overnight fame as a poet and explorer, and he entertained often by telling tales to his admirers. "He speaks Typee and Omoo with his cigar and Spanish eyes, just as your delightful mind flows on paper," writer and editor Nathaniel Parker Willis wrote. Melville, who had failed to find a "government job" in Washington in 1847.

Melville and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Knapp Shaw were engaged in June 1847, after knowing each other for about three months. Melville had first begged her father, Lemuel Shaw, for her hand in March, but she was refused at the time. Shaw, the Chief Justice of Massachusetts, had been a close friend of Melville's father, and his union with Melville's aunt Nancy was only halted due to her death. Following Allan's death, his warmth and financial assistance for the family remained. Melville wrote Typee, his first book. Lizzie was raised by her grandmother and an Irish nurse. "His desire for Judge Shaw's paternal presence" may have fuelled Melville's interest in Lizzie, according to Arvin. They were married on August 4, 1847. Lizzie's wedding was described as "very unexpected, and barely thought about until about two months before it took place." She wanted to marry in church, but they had a private wedding reception at home to prevent potential crowds of people aspired to see the celebrity. The couple honeymooned in the then-British Province of Canada and then travelled to Montreal. They settled in a home on Fourth Avenue in New York City (now called Park Avenue).

Lizzie's marriage vows, a desire to make a home with Melville whatever where you live, a willingness to please her husband by doing such "drudgery" as mending stockings, the ability to mask her agitation, and a desire to shield Melville from madness, according to scholars Joyce Deveau Kennedy and Frederick James Kennedy. With:: The Kennedys' report comes to an end.

"Lizzie's youthful spirit and abundant energy," she says, and vice versa, "her pluck and good humor may have attracted Melville to her" and vice versa. In a letter about her not used to being married, an example of such good humor appears: "It appears often as if I were here for a visit." The illusion is disillusioned, but when Herman stalks into my room without even the funeral of knocking, it brings me perhaps a button to sew on or some other romantic occupation. Malcolm, the Melvilles' first child, was born on February 16, 1849.

Mardi was published by Richard Bentley in London in March 1848 and by Harper in New York in April. Nathaniel Hawthorne said it was a rich book "with depths here and there that compel a man to swim for his life." According to Milder, the book began as another South Sea tale but, as he wrote, Melville left this story behind, first in favor of "a tale of the narrator Taji and the missing maiden Yillah" and then "to an allegorical journey of the philosopher Babbalanja and his companions through Mardi's fictional archipelago.

Redburn was published by Bentley in London in October 1849, and Harper in New York in November. In this "story of outward transformation and inner darkness," Allan Melvill's bankruptcy and death, as well as Melville's own youthful humiliations. "Melville modeled every episode largely on every segment that was favored by some group of antebellum readers," combining elements of "the picaresque novel, the travelogue, the nautical romance, the romantic thriller, temperance tracts, and the English pastoral, according to biographer Robertson-Lorant. Bentley published White-Jacket in London in January 1850, and Harper in New York in March.

Moby-Dick's first recorded mention of him is from a May 1, 1850, letter in which Melville told fellow sea author Richard Henry Dana Jr., "I am half way in the job." He described the book to his English publisher as "a journey of discovery, based on certain wild legends in the Southern Sperm Whale Fisheries," and said it would be finished by the fall. The original manuscript has not survived. Melville read Thomas Carlyle (1833-34), On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History (1841), his friend Evert Duyckinck's library. These findings were pivotal, considering that Melville's initial script for the novel changed dramatically over the next few months, conceiving what Delbanco called "the most imaginable book ever imagined by an American writer."

The Melvilles, Sarah Morewood, Duyckinck, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and other literary figures from New York and Boston went to Pittsfield from August 4 to 12. Nathaniel Hawthorne and his publisher James T. Fields joined the company, but Hawthorne's wife stayed at home to look after the children. Hawthorne and Melville were looking for cover from the rain together on one picnic outing arranged by Duyckinck, Hawthorne and Melville found a deep, private chat. Melville had been given a copy of Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, but he hadn't yet read it. In The Literary World, Melville read it extensively and wrote a report called "Hawthorne and His Mosses." Melville wrote that these stories exposed a dark side to Hawthorne, "shrouded in darkness, ten times black." He compared Hawthorne to Shakespeare, and he added that "men not significantly inferior to Shakespeare are this day being born on the banks of Ohio." While writing Moby-Dick, Walter Bezanson says the essay is "so profoundly connected to Melville's imaginative and intellectual world" that it could be regarded as a virtual preface and should be "everybody's top piece of contextual reading." Duyckinck delivered Hawthorne copies of Melville's three most recent books later this summer. As Hawthorne wrote to Duyckinck on August 29, Melville in Redburn and White-Jacket "more unflinchingly" before his reader than any writer, and he believed Mardi was "a good book, with depths here and there that compel a man to swim for his life." "It's so good that one barely pardons the writer for not having brooded long about it" he said, "It's just good that it makes it a great deal better."

Melville purchased a 160-acre farm in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1850, borrowing three thousand dollars from his father-in-law Lemuel Shaw. During the planting season, Melville named his new home Arrowheads because of the arrowheads dug up around the property. Melville paid Hawthorne an unexpected visit last winter, only to find he was working and "not in the mood for company." Sophia, Hawthorne's wife, gave him copies of Twice-Told Tales and Malcolm, The Grandfather's Chair. Melville invited them to visit Arrowhead shortly, hoping to "discuss] the Universe with a bottle of brandy & cigars with Hawthorne, but Hawthorne would not stop working on his new book for more than a day, and they didn't appear. Hawthorne surprised him on his second visit to Melville by arriving at Arrowhead with his daughter Una. "The handsome Hawthorne left a lasting impression on the Melville women, especially Augusta, who was a big fan of his books," Robertson-Lorant said. They spent the day mostly "smoking and discussing metaphysics."

Melville was "infatuated with Hawthorne's intellect, captivated by his art, and charmed by his elusive demeanor," according to Robertson-Lorant, but "the relationship meant something different to each of them." They may have been "natural allies and friends" but they were also "fifteen years apart in age and temperament, and temperamentally distinct," and Hawthorne wrote "Epoch Melville's manic intensity exhausting at times." In all the ten letters Melville wrote to the older man, Bezanson refers to his "sexual excitement." "I think that this Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my soul," Melville wrote in the Hawthorne Mosses essay. The more I consider him, the more I consider him; and yet more, he reaches his roots in the hot soil of my Southern soul. "In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne."

The Whale was released in Britain in three volumes on October 18, 1851, and Moby-Dick's first volume appeared in the United States on November 14 in the United States as a single volume. Stanwix, the Melvilles' second child, was born on October 22, 1851, during which time. "What a book Melville has written in December," Hawthorne told Duyckinck. It gives me a lot more power than his predecessor ones." Unlike other contemporaneous reviewers of Melville, Hawthorne had recognized the distinctiveness of Melville's latest book and acknowledged it. Melville paid a visit to Hawthorne in early December 1852 and explored the possibility of the "Agatha" story, which he had pitched to Hawthorne. This was the last known contact between the two writers before Melville and Hawthorne in Liverpool four years ago, when Hawthorne had migrated to England.

Melville, who had borrowed three thousand dollars from his father-in-law in September 1850 to buy a 160-acre farm in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, had a great desire that his next book would please the public and recover his finances. He told his British publisher, Richard Bentley, that his new book had "unquestionable authenticity" and was supposed to have a large audience with elements of romance and mystery in April 1851. In fact, Pierre: or, The Ambition, Pierre: Although drawing on the romance's traditions and fashionable, it was still difficult in style. It was not well received. On September 8, 1852, the New York Day Book published a venomous attack titled "HERMAN MELVILLE CRAZY." The item, which had been marketed as a news briefing, was sold as a news report, according to the website.

Elizabeth (Bessie) was born on May 22, 1853, Melville's third child and first daughter, and Herman completed work on the Agatha tale, Isle of the Cross, on or about that day. Melville and his publisher travelled to New York to discuss a book, presumably Isle of the Cross, but later realized that Harper & Brothers had been "prevented" from publishing his manuscript because it was lost.

Melville had a difficult time finding a publisher for his follow-up book Israel Potter after Pierre's commercial and critical failure. Rather, this tale of a Revolutionary War soldier was serialized in Putnam's Monthly Magazine in 1853. In Putnam's and Harper's magazines from November 1853 to 1856, Melville collected fourteen stories and sketches. He suggested to Dix & Edwards, the current owners of Putnam's Putnam's, that they publish a narrow collection of the short stories in December 1855. The Piazza Tales collection was named after Melville's "The Piazza" collection, a new introduction story. It also contained five previously published stories, including "Bartleby, Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno." Frances (Fanny), the Melvilles' fourth child, was born on March 2, 1855. Israel Potter's book was published in this period.

The Confidence-Man's writing put a strain on Melville, causing Sam Shaw, nephew of Lizzie, to write to his uncle Lemuel Shaw, referring to "the bouts of rheumatism and sciatica that engulfed Melville." When Melville's father-in-law wrote a letter to a cousin in which he referred to Melville's "deeply involved" in one of his literary works, he evidently confided him [self] to hard study many hours a day, with little or no exercise, particularly in winter. He obviously overworks himself and brings on intensely traumatic affections." Shaw travelled from Lizzie's inheritance to travel four or five months in Europe and the Holy Land.

Melville made a six-month Grand Tour of Europe and the Mediterranean from October 11, 1856, to May 20, 1857. While in England in November 1856, he briefly reunited with Hawthorne, who had taken the role of United States Consul in Liverpool at the time, when the Atlantic trade's hub was still present. They had a chat at the nearby coast resort of Southport, where they had to avoid smoking cigarettes for the first time; "Melville, as he always does, began to think of Providence and destiny, and everything that is beyond human ken," Hawthorne later wrote in his journal, and told me that he is more spiritual and noble than most of us."

The Mediterranean portion of the tour took place in the Holy Land, which inspired his epic poem Clarel. During the tour, he visited Mount Hope, a Christian farm near Jaffa. Melville's last full-length book The Confidence-Man was published on April 1, 1857. In modern times, this book, titled His Masquerade, has received widespread recognition for its intricate and ambiguous investigation into topics of fraud, honesty, and masquerade. However, when it was released, it received accolades from the bewildered to the denunciatory.

Melville began public lecturing from late 1857 to 1860 to recover his declining funds. He began three lectures and spoke at lyceums, mainly on Roman statuary and sightseeing in Rome. Modern audiences applauded Melville's lectures, which mocked lyceum culture's pseudo-intellectualism. Melville boarded the clipper Meteor for California on May 30, 1860, with his brother Thomas at the helm. Melville returned from Cape Horn alone via Panama in November after a turbulent ride around Cape Horn. Later this year, he submitted a poetry collection to a publisher, but it was declined, and it is now lost. He purchased his brother's house on East 26th Street in New York City in 1863 and moved there.

Melville visited the American Civil War battlefields in 1864. He published Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), a series of 72 poems that has been described as "a polyphonic verse journal of the war" following the war. The copy didn't do well financially—output: The work was not well-received—of the print run of 1,260 copies, 300 were sent as review copies, and 551 copies were sold—and reviewers did not know that Melville had deliberately avoided the ostentatious diction and fine writing styles that were popular, preferring to be clear and spare.

Melville, a New York City customs inspector, became a s inspector in 1866. He served in the role for 19 years and was known for honesty in a notoriously biased organization. (Unknown to Melville, his position was often shielded by future American President Chester A. Arthur, followed by a customs official who admired Melville's writing but never spoke to him.) Melville suffered with chronic exhaustion, physical pain, and hunger during his time as a writer, as well as attacking his wife Lizzie when he returned home after heavy drinking. Malcolm, the Melvilles' older brother, died in his bedroom at 18 years old from a self-inflicted gunshot, perhaps accidental. Lizzie's brother, Sam, who revealed his family's concern about Melville's sanity, tried to get her out of Melville in May 1867. Lizzie was planning to visit her family in Boston and tell the court that her husband was insane. Lizzie, on the other hand, whether she wanted to avoid the social shame divorce that was going on at the time or because she still loved her husband, refused to go along with the scheme.

Although Melville's formal writing career came to an end, he continued to write. He spent years on Clarel, a poet and a Pilgrimage (1876), an 18,000-line epic poem inspired by his 1856 trip to the Holy Land. Milder referred to it as "his fallal masterpiece" Clarel: A Poem and a Pilgrimage (1876). It is one of the longest single poems in American literature. The title character is a young American student of divinity who flies to Jerusalem to renew his faith. Rolfe, one of the central characters, is a seeker and adventurer from Melville's younger days, while the reclusive Vine is loosely based on Hawthorne, who died twelve years ago. In 1876, a bequest from his uncle was funded, but copies failed miserably, and new copies were burned as Melville was unable to buy them at cost. Lewis Mumford, a critic, discovered an unread copy in the New York Public Library in 1925 "with its pages uncut."

Even though Melville's own income was modest, Lizzie left a legacy in 1884 that enabled him to purchase a steady stream of books and prints each month. Melville died on December 31, 1885, after several of his wife's relatives helped the couple with additional legacies and inheritances. Stanwix, their younger son, died in San Francisco at the age of 36 from tuberculosis on February 22, 1886. Melville became a member of the New York Society Library in 1889.

When readers read his books, Melville had a modest revival of fame in England. He produced two collections of poems influenced by his early experiences at sea, as well as prose head notes. Each had a print run of 25 copies, and was intended for his relatives and acquaintances. In 1888, John Marr and Other Sailors was published, followed by Timoleon in 1891.

He died on September 28, 1891, the morning of. The cause, according to his death certificate, "cardiac dilation" was the cause. He was laid to rest in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City. There were few obituaries at the time.

The initial death notice by the New York Times called his masterpiece "Mobie Dick," which later was misconstrued as meaning that he was unappreciated at his time of death. But there were some appreciations. On October 2, the Times, for example, published a long article of appreciation. "There is no doubt about knowing why they were then read and talked about," Melville's books, which were so much read forty years ago, has been a mystery," the author said.

Melville left a collection of poems, Weeds and Wildings, as well as a sketch, "Daniel Orme," which was unpublished at the time of his death. Billy Budd, his wife's first novella, has also found pages for an unfinished novella. Melville had updated and reorganized the manuscript in several steps, resulting in the pages being disorganized. Lizzie could not decide her husband's motives (or even read his handwriting in some cases), and so she gave up attempts to edit the manuscript for publication. When Melville's grandmother gave them to Raymond Weaver in 1919, they were stored in a family breadbox. In 1924, Weaver, a scholar who had initially dismissed the work's importance, released a quick transcription. However, this version contained several misreads, some of which were ineffective in terms of interpretation. It was an immediate success in England and then in the United States. The Melville scholars Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts published a critical reading book in 1962 that was widely distributed. In 1951, it was revived as a stage play on Broadway, then an opera, and in 1961, as a film.

Education and father's death

Herman Melville's education began when he was five years old and was interrupted at age 12 by his father's death at age 12. Herman and his older brother Gansevoort were admitted to the New York Male High School around 1824, about the time the Melvills moved to a recently constructed house on 33 Bleecker Street in Manhattan. Allan Melvill wrote him as "very backwards in word and a little slower in comprehension" at first, but his growth picked up and Allan was surprised that "Herman was the best Speaker in the introduction Department" in 1826. Both Gansevoort and Herman were sent to Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in 1829, and Herman was enrolled in the English Department on September 28. "Herman I think is making more progress than ever," Allan wrote in May 1830 to Major Melvill, "and even if he were a good scholar, he maintains his respectable reputation and will continue to study more—being a more amiable and innocent child, I would not find it in my heart to coerce him."

Herman's father hoped to return by moving his family to Albany, New York, in 1830, instead of going into the fur trade, but was very poor and behind on paying the rent for the house on Broadway. Herman attended the Albany Academy from October 1830 to October 1831, where he took the standard preparatory curriculum, reading and spelling; penmanship; English grammar; geography; universal, Greek, Roman, and English history; and Jewish antiquities. Herman marched in the Albany city government parade of the year's "finest scholars" in early August and was given a copy of The London Carcanet, a series of poems and prose, dubbed "first best in ciphering books" by the author. Merton Sealts, a Melville scholar, wrote: 'Merton Sealts' words were enlightened.

Nonetheless, Melville's time at the Academy was soon to come. Parker claims he stopped it in October 1831 because "even the small tuition fee seemed too much to pay."

Allan Melvill returned from New York City by steamboat in December, but he had to travel the last seventy miles in an open carriage for two days and two nights in sub-freezing weather. He began to show "signs of delirium" in early January, and his situation got worse until his wife discovered that his suffering had stripped him of his intellect. He died on January 28, 1832, two months before reaching his 50th birthday. These scenes occurred as Herman was no longer attending school. He recalled a similar death in Pierre 20 years ago.

Several major changes in the family's economic and spiritual circumstances were caused by Allan's death. One of the best results was the greater influence of his mother's religious convictions. Maria began seeking consolation in her faith and was accepted as a member of the First Reformed Dutch Church in April. Herman's adherence to orthodox Calvinism was certainly the most determinant intellectual and spiritual influence of his youth. Gansevoort started the cap and fur trade two months after his father's death. Uncle Peter Gansevoort, the president of New York State Bank, gave Herman a job as clerk for $150 a year (equivalent to $4,100 in 2021). When trying to figure out what Herman must have felt like back then, biographers cite a passage from Redburn: "I must not think of those glorious days before my father became a bankrupt... and we have been barred from the city; still, something rises in my throat and almost strangles me." One must deal with "psychology, the tormented psychology of the defunct patrician," Melville Arvin says.

Maria and her children learned Allan, who had borrowed more than half of his inheritance when Melville's paternal grandfather died on September 16, 1832, equivalent to $500 in 2021). His paternal grandmother died about seven months after. Melville did his job well at the bank, although the bank believed him to be sent to Schenectady, New York, on an errand. Other than the fact that he was a big fan of drawing, not much more is known about this period. The visual arts have long piqued my interest. The Melvilles moved to a three-story brick house in Albany, about May 1834. Gansevoort's skin-preparing factory was devastated by a fire that left him with workers he couldn't afford nor employ. Rather, Melville was pulled out of the bank to assist in the cap and fur store.

Melville, who was still employed in the store, enrolled in Albany Classical School in 1835, perhaps using Maria's share of the estate of his maternal grandmother's estate in March 1835. Herman was back in Albany Academy in the Latin program in September of the following year. He also participated in debating societies in an apparent attempt to make up as much as he could for his academic years. At least Macbeth, whose witch scenes gave him the opportunity to teasingly terrorize his sisters, so he read Shakespeare in this period. He had been suspended from Albany Academy by March 1837.

Gansevoort served as a role model and advocate for Melville throughout his life, particularly during the years of trying to put together an education. Gansevoort had been a member of Albany's Young Men's Association for Mutual Development in early 1834, and Melville joined him in January 1835. Gansevoort also had copies of John Todd's Index Rerum, a blank register for indexing obscure passages from books that had been read for simple retrieval. "Pequot, stunning account of the war with," was one of Gansevoort's sample entries revealing his academic zealousness, as well as Volume II in 1818, where the description could be found. Melville's reading in this period is shown by the two remaining volumes of Gansevoort's book. "Parsees — An excellent description of their character, faith, and an account of their descent — are among Melville's entries. p. 21" Other entries include Panther, the pirate's cabin, and a storm at sea from James Fenimore Cooper's The Red Rover, Saint-Saba.

Gansevoort was forced to file bankruptcy in April due to the Panic of 1837. Maria told the younger children that they should leave Albany for somewhere cheaper in June. Gansevoort began studying law in New York City while Herman was in charge of the farm before he began teaching at Sikes District School in Lenox, Massachusetts. He taught about 30 students of various ages, some of whom were of his own age.

He returned to his mother in 1838, despite the fact that the semester had ended. He was elected president of the Philo Logos Society in February, which Peter Gansevoort was allowed to move into Stanwix Hall for no money. Melville wrote two polemical letters about topics that were in fashion in debating societies in the Albany Microscope in March. According to historian Leon Howard and Hershel Parker, the motivation behind the letters was a youthful desire to have his rhetorical abilities publicly acknowledged. The Melvilles moved to Lansingburgh, just over 12 miles north of Albany, in May. Melville did not do or where he went for several months after he stopped teaching at Sikes, but it is unknown. Melville paid for a term at Lansingburgh Academy to study surveying and engineering on November 12, five days after arriving in Lansingburgh. Peter Gansevoort says his nephew "has the desire to make himself useful in a sector where he wishes to work." but no one responded in an April 1839 letter recommending Herman for a position in the Engineer Department of the Erie Canal.

Melville's first published essay appeared just weeks after this disappointment. "L.A.V. is the first letter of a word that appears in a dictionary. "Herman contributed "Fragments from a Writing Desk" to the weekly newspaper Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser, which published it in two installments, the first on May 4; the second on May 4. According to Merton Sealts, his use of heavy-handed allusions shows an acquaintance with William Shakespeare's, John Milton, Walter Scott, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke, Lord Byron, and Thomas Moore. Parker calls the piece "characteristic Melvillean mood-stuff" and claims that the style is "excessive enough [...] to indulge his extravagances while still allowing him to deny that he was seriously considering his style. The style of Delbanco is "overheated in the manner of Poe," according to Poe's, with sexually charged echoes of Byron and The Arabian Nights.

Gansevoort, a New York City resident then, wrote that he was certain Herman would have a job on a whale or merchant vessel. He hopped aboard the merchant ship St. Lawrence as a "boy" (a green hand), which cruised from New York to Liverpool the next day. Redburn: His First Voyage (1849) recounts his participation in this journey; at least two of the nine guide-books included in chapter 30 of the book were part of Allan Melvill's library. He returned to New York on October 1, 1839 and resumed teaching, this time in Greenbush, New York, but after one term because he had not been paid. In the summer of 1840, he and his friend James Murdock Fly went to Galena, Illinois, to see if Uncle Thomas could help them find jobs. In fall, he and his companion returned home, most likely via St. Louis and the Ohio River.

In the May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker magazine, Herman and Gansevoort's account of the hunt for a great white sperm whale named Mocha Dick, Herman and Gansevoort, traveled to New Bedford, where Herman signed up for a whaling voyage aboard a new ship, the Acushnet, inspired by contemporaneous popular cultural reading, including Richard Henry Dana Jr.'s book Two Years Before the Mast and The ship, which was built in 1840, measured 104 feet in length, nearly 28 feet in breadth, and nearly 14 feet in depth. She weighed just less than 360 pounds and had three decks and three masts, but not in any quarter galleries, but no quarter galleries were available. Melvin O. Bradford and Philemon Fuller of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, berthed near their office on Center Street in that town's downtown district, and was berthed near their office. On Christmas Day, Herman signed a deal with the ship's agent as a "green hand" for 1/175 percent of whatever proceeds the voyage will bring. The brothers heard Reverend Enoch Mudge speak at the Seamen's Bethel in Johnny-Cake Hill, where white marble cenotaphs on the walls commemorated local sailors who had died at sea, many in battle with whales. Herman was paid $84 when he appeared on the crew list the next day.

The Acushnet set sail on January 3, 1841. Melville slept with some twenty others in the forecastle; the mates, Captain Valentine Pease; and the skilled men slept aft. Whales were discovered in the Bahamas, and Rio de Janeiro sent 150 barrels of oil home in March. A single whale took about three days to cut in and trying out (boiling), and a whale produced about one barrel of oil per foot of length and per ton of weight (the average whale weighed 40 to 60 tons). The oil was left on deck for a day to cool, and was then stowed away; scrubbing the deck completed the job. On an average trip, forty whales were killed, resulting in a yield of 1600 barrels of oil.

The Acushnet sailed around Cape Horn on April 15, heading to the South Pacific, where the crew caught whales without missing any. She then travelled up the coast of Chile to Selkirk Island, where she collected 160 barrels off the coast of Juan Fernández Island on May 7, near Juan Fernández Islands. In Santa Harbor on June 23, the ship anchored for the first time since Rio. The Acushnet's cruise grounds attracted a lot of attention, and Captain Pease not only stopped to visit other whalers but also hunted in company with them at times. The Acushnet regularly dated with the Lima from Nantucket from July 23 to August, and Melville's William Henry Chase, Owen Chase's uncle, gave him a copy of his father's account of his voyages aboard the Essex. In his other book, Melville wrote: "The reading of this wondrous tale about the landless sea and close to the shipwreck's latitude had a surprising effect on me."

The ship delivered 600 barrels of oil to another whale on September 25, as well as 700 barrels of oil to another whale. The Acushnet crossed the equator to the north on October 24, and six or seven days later, they landed in the Galápagos Islands. This short visit will be the catalyst for "The Encantadas." The Acushnet and three other American whalers were hunting together near the Galápagos Islands on November 2, although Melville later exaggerated the number in Sketch Fourth of "The Encantadas." From November 19 to 25, the ship anchored at Chatham's Isle and anchored in Tombez, Peru, with 570 barrels of oil on board. The Acushnet sighted Cape Blanco off the coast of Ecuador on December 27, which was off the coast of Ecuador. Point St. Elena was sighted the next day, and the ship made landfall in Galápagos Islands from the southeast on January 6, 1842. Seven sightings of sperm whales were recorded from May 13 to 7, but none was killed. The Acushnet collaborately set about its whaling ventures with the Columbus of New Bedford, which also obtained letters from Melville's ship; the two ships were in the same area just south of the Equator, from early May to early June. On the second day of the Herald, the Acushnet carried 750 barrels of oil and sent 200 people home, and on June 23, she anchored at Nuku Hiva.

Melville and his shipmate Richard Tobias Greene ("Toby") jumped ship at Nuku Hiva Bay in the summer of 1842. Typee (1846), Melville's first book, is based on his stay in or near the Taipi Valley. Melville had left the island off the coast of Tahiti by mid-August, where he was involved in a mutiny and was briefly imprisoned in the native Calabooza Betanee. He and crewmate John B. B. were arrested in October and were stranded. Troy left Tahiti for Eimeo. He spent a month in Tahitian as a beachcomber and island rover ("omoo") before heading to Moorea. Omoo, the sequel to Typee, he drew on his experiences. He contracted to be a seaman on the Nantucket whaler Charles & Henry for a six-month cruise in November 1842 to April 1843, and was discharged in May 1843 in Maui's Lahaina, Maui.

Melville joined the US Navy on August 20 as an ordinary seaman on the frigate USS United States after four months of being a clerk. The homeward bound ship toured the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, and Valparaiso, before arriving in Boston on October 3. Melville was suspended on October 14 after being in breach of his employment. In White-Jacket (1850), Melville's fifth book, this Navy tale is used.

Melville's wandering years led to "a deep and growing sense of his own exceptionalism as a human," as well as "the resentful belief that nature and mankind have already imposed their will on him in a sequence of injurious ways." According to scholar Robert Milder, Melville's encounter with the wide ocean, where he was essentially abandoned by God, led him to a "metaphysical misapprehension" and influenced his social views in two ways: first, he realized that by entering Polynesia's cultures, he could see the West from an outsider's perspective.

Melville revived his family and friends with his literary tales and romantic experiences, and his family and friends pleaded for his writing upon his return. While living in Troy, New York, Melville wrote Typee, his first book, in the summer of 1845. Gansevoort's brother discovered a publisher for it in London, where it was first published in February 1846 by John Murray in his travelogue collection. It became an overnight best-seller in England, then in New York when Wiley & Putnam first published it on March 17.

Melville's story stretched the period of time he had lived on the island and also used source books he had assembled. Typee, Milder, is described as "an exciting blend of adventure, anecdote, ethnography, and sociological study accompanied by a vivacious latitudinarianism that gave a new sense of wonder to a South Sea idyll at once erotically suggestive and romantically chaste."

Hawthorne continued:

Melville later expressed doubt that he would "go down to posterity" as a "man who lived among the cannibals," after being overwhelmed by the adulation of his new public. Melville's writing brought him right into contact with his colleague Greene—Toby in the book—who wrote an article in which Melville's account was confirmed in newspapers. Melville "traced and successfully located his old friend" for a new meeting between the two families from 1863 to 1863, and in his final years Melville "traced and found his old friend" for a new meeting between the two men. Omoo, a sequel to Typee, was published by Murray in London in March 1847, and Harper in New York in May. According to Milder, Omoo is "a little bit more advanced book." Melville was renown as a writer and adventurer overnight, and he was often entertained by telling tales to his admirers. "With his cigarettes and his Spanish eyes, he discusses Typee and Omoo, just as you discover the flow of his delightful mind on paper," writer and editor Nathaniel Parker Willis wrote. Melville, an 1847 student, struggled to find a "government job" in Washington.

Melville and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Knapp Shaw were engaged in June 1847 after knowing each other for about three months. Melville had first begged her father, Lemuel Shaw, for her hand in March, but she was turned down at the time. Shaw, the Chief Justice of Massachusetts, had been a close friend of Melville's father, and his union with Melville's aunt Nancy was prevented solely by her death. Since Allan's death, his warmth and financial assistance for his family continued. Melville wrote Typee, his first book. Lizzie was raised by her grandmother and an Irish nurse. According to Arvin, Melville's fascination in Lizzie may have been sparked by "his desire for Judge Shaw's paternal presence." They were married on August 4, 1847. Lizzie described their wedding as "very unexpected" and "noly thought about until about two months before it took place." She wanted to marry in church but they had a private wedding reception at home to prevent potential crowds eager to see the celebrity. The couple honeymooned in Montreal, Canada's then-British Province, and then travelled to Montréal. They landed on Fourth Avenue in New York City (now called Park Avenue).

Lizzie came to their marriage with a sense of religious obligation, a desire to make a home with Melville regardless of location, and a desire to shield Melville from uninhibition, according to scholars Joyce Deveau Kennedy and Frederick James Kennedy. With:: With:: The Kennedys' study comes to an end.

"Lizzie's vivacious spirit and abundant enthusiasm," robographer Robertson-Lorant says, "her pluck and good humor may have attracted Melville to her, and vice versa." In a letter about her not yet married, an example of such good humor appears: "It appears to me sometimes as if I were here for a visit." The illusion is dispelled however when Herman stalks into my room without even the formalities of knocking, bringing me perhaps a button to sew on or some other romantic occupation." Malcolm, the Melvilles' first child, was born on February 16, 1849.

Mardi was first published by Richard Bentley in London in March 1848, and in April by Harper in New York. Nathaniel Hawthorne said it was a good book "with depths here and there that compel a man to swim for his life." According to Milder, the book started as another South Sea tale, but Melville left this genre behind, first in favour of "a tale about the narrator Taji and the missing maiden Yillah" and then "to an allegorical journey of the philosopher Babbalanja and his companions through Mardi's imaginary archipelago.

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