Writer, born in New York City, New York, USA. He left school at 15 and worked as a bank clerk (1834), farmhand, and schoolteacher. In 1837 he served as a cabin boy on a ship bound for Liverpool. In 1841 he set sail for the South Pacific on the whaler Acushnet. He deserted at the Marquesas Is with a friend, and lived for a short time with the Typee cannibals, then escaped to Tahiti and enjoyed an idyllic period there before he enlisted in the US Navy and returned to Boston (1844). The publication of Typee (1846), based on his Marquesas Is adventure, and Omoo (1847), derived from his stay in Tahiti, made him famous. Later novels, Mardi (1849), Redburn (1849), and White-Jacket (1850), also based on his sea travels, were not as successful. He married Elizabeth Shaw (1847), moved to New York City, and travelled to England and Paris (1849).
He settled in Pittsfield, MA and while writing Moby Dick there he befriended Nathaniel Hawthorne, dedicating his epic to him. Moby Dick (1851) is considered a masterpiece of American literature, but it was not well received by either readers or critics, who found it difficult and unsettling. The autobiographical Pierre (1852) also failed to win over the public. Discouraged, he travelled to the Holy Land in search of inspiration (18567). Such works as Israel Potter (1855), The Piazza Tales (1856), and The Confidence Man (1857) also found few readers, while his poetry would prove even more elusive. Withdrawing from the quest for literary recognition, in 1863 he moved to New York City again and worked there as a customs inspector (186685). His last significant work, Billy Bud, Foretopman, finished just before his death, was not published until 1924. He died poor and in obscurity, and it was the 1920s before Americans recognized his achievements and elevated him to rank as one of the greatest of all American creative artists.
Herman Melville|
Photograph of Herman Melville |
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| Born: |
August 1, 1819 New York City, New York, United States |
|---|---|
| Died: |
September 28, 1891 New York City, New York |
| Occupation(s): | novelist, short story writer, teacher, sailor, lecturer, poet |
| Nationality: | american |
| Genre(s): | travelogue |
| Literary movement: | precursor to Modernism, precursor to absurdism and existentialism |
Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, essayist and poet. By the time of his death he had nearly been forgotten, but his masterpiece, Moby-Dick (which during his life was largely considered a failure, and responsible for Melville's drop in popularity at the time), was "rediscovered" in the 20th century.
Life
Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819, as the third child of Allan and Maria Gansevoort Melvill (Maria would later add an 'e' to the surname), and received his early education in that city.
His father described the young man as being somewhat slow as a child, and Melville was also weakened by the scarlet fever, which permanently affected his eyesight.
Melville's roving disposition and a desire to support himself independently of family assistance led him to seek work as a surveyor on the Erie Canal. After a sojourn to the Society Islands, Melville shipped for Honolulu.
Melville married Elizabeth Shaw (daughter of noted jurist, Lemuel Shaw) on August 4, 1847. The Melvilles resided in New York City until 1850, when they purchased Arrowhead, a farm house in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (which is today a museum). Here Melville remained for thirteen years, occupied with his writing and managing his farm. Following scathing reviews of Pierre by critics, publishers became wary of Melville's work.
While in Pittsfield, because of financial reasons, Melville was persuaded to enter the lucrative lecture field. Pulling his life together, he became a customs inspector for the City of New York, a post he held for 19 years.
After an illness that lasted several months, Melville died at his home in New York City early on the morning of September 28, 1891, age 72, in virtual obscurity. The New York Times listed his name in an obituary as "Henry Melville."
In Herman Melville's Religious Journey, Walter Donald Kring detailed his discovery of letters indicating that Melville had been a member of the Unitarian Church of All Souls.
Literature
Moby-Dick has become Melville's most famous work and is often considered one of the greatest American novels. It did not, however, make Melville rich. Melville also wrote Billy Budd, White-Jacket, Typee, Omoo, Pierre, The Confidence-Man and many short stories and works of various genres.
Melville's short stories "Thooooooe Tartarus of Maids" and "The Paradise of Bachelors", as well as his posthumous novella Billy Budd have been seen by some contemporary critics as anticipating key issues in the fields of gender studies and queer studies. For example, the critic Eve Sedgewick has made notable contributions to the understanding of gender and sexuality in Melville's fiction.
Likewise, Melville's 1855 short story "Benito Cereno" is one of the few works of 19th century American literature to confront the African Diaspora and the violent history of race relations in America.
Melville is less well known as a poet and did not publish poetry until late in life; But again tending to outrun the tastes of his readers, Melville's epic length verse-narrative Clarel, about a student's pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was also quite obscure, even in his own time.
The Melville Revival
After the success of stories and travelogues based on voyages to the South Seas during his youth, Melville's popularity declined. The publication in 1924 of Billy Budd, Sailor, Raymond Weaver's biography Herman Melville: Man, Mariner and Mystic (1921), D. Lawrence's essays in Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) and Lewis Mumford's biography Herman Melville: A study of His Life and Vision (1929) began a revival in critical studies of Melville's work. This work was followed by a string of important criticism and biography, including Jay Leyda's The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville, 1819-1891 (1951), Leon Howard's Herman Melville: A Biography (1951) and, most notably perhaps, winner of the 1950 National Book Award for non-fiction, Herman Melville by Newton Arvin. Due to these works and the subsequent profusion of research on Melville's work he has become universally recognized as a major canonical figure. In recent years, a number of major biographies, Laurie Robertson-Lorant's Melville: A Biography (1996), Hershel Parker's Herman Melville: A Biography (1996) and most recently, Andrew Delbanco's Melville: His World and Work (2005), have corroborated Melville's status as representative figure in American literature.
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