Encyclopedia > Herman Melville

  Article Content

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819 - 1891) was a U.S. novelist, essayist, and poet. During his own lifetime his early novels, South Seas adventures, were quite popular, but his audience declined later in his life. By the time of his death he had nearly been forgotten, but his masterpiece, Moby-Dick, was "rediscovered" in following years and he is now widely esteemed one of the most important figures in American literature.

In spite of being poorly received when first published, Moby-Dick is one of the canonical novels in the English language. It tells the story of Captain Ahab, a Quaker sea captain obsessed with killing a legendary white whale that cost him one of his legs. It is narrated by a crew-member who calls himself Ishmael and who, like Melville himself, has a rich litererary background that he brings to bear on his shipmates and their adventure. The other crew-members of Ahab's ship, the Pequod, are carefully drawn stylizations of humans types and habits; critics have often described them as a "self-enclosed universe." Descriptions of the methods of whale-hunting, the adventure, and the narrator's reflections interweave the story's themes with huge swath of Western literature, history, mythology, philosophy, and science. The prose is intricate and imaginative, and Melville is among the finest prose stylists America has produced--his peers might include Faulkner[?], Henry James, and Thomas Pynchon.

Melville was a friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and was influenced by the latter's writing; Moby-Dick is dedicated to Hawthorne. In his later life, his works no longer accessible to a broad audience, he was not able to make money from writing. He depended on his wife's family for money, and later became a New York City Customs agent. His short novel Billy Budd[?], an unpublished manuscript at the time of his death, was later published successfully and was turned into an opera by Benjamin Britten.

Melville also wrote White-Jacket[?], Typee, Omoo[?], Pierre[?], The Confidence Man[?] and many short stories and works of various genres. His short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" is among his most important pieces, and has been considered a precursor to Existentialist and Absurdist[?] literature. Rarely among poets, he did not write any substantial poetry until late in his life; after the American Civil WarCivil War[?], he published Battle-Pieces, which sold well. But once again tending to outrun the tastes of his readers, Melville's poetic masterpiece, the epic length verse-narrative Clarel, about a student's pilgrimmage to the Holy Land, was also quiteunknown in his own time.

Paraphrased from the introduction written by Arthur Stedman to the 1892 edition of Melville's Typee:

Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819, and received his early education in that city. He says he gained his first love of adventure listening to his father Allan, who was an extensive traveller for his time, telling tales of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high, of the masts bending like twigs, and all about Le Havre and Liverpool. After the death of his father the family (eight brothers and sisters) moved to the village of Lansingburg, on the Hudson River. There Herman remained until 1835, when he attended the Albany Classical School for some months.





Melville married Miss Elizabeth Shaw on August 4, 1847, in Boston, whereupon his nautical wanderings were brought to a conclusion. Mr. and Mrs. Melville resided in New York City until 1850, when they purchased a farmhouse at Pittsfield. Here Melville remained for thirteen years, occupied with his writing, and managing his farm. An article in Putnam's Monthly entitled 'I and My Chimney,' another called 'October Mountain,' and the introduction to the 'Piazza Tales,' present faithful pictures of Arrow Head and its surroundings.



External Links

e-texts of some of Herman Melville's works:


  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
  Featured Article

... 1542), explorer Bartolomeu Dias, (1450-1500), Portuguese explorer who first rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Sir Francis Drake, (c. 1540-1596), pirate, leader of th ...

This page was created in 36.5 ms