Herman Melville

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American writer of novels, short stories and poetry. His contributions to the Western canon are the whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851); the short work Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853) about a clerk in a Wall Street office; the slave ship narrative Benito Cereno (1855); and Billy Budd, Sailor, left unfinished at his death and published in 1924.

Around his twentieth year he was a schoolteacher for a short time, then became a seaman when his father met business reversals. On his first voyage he jumped ship in the Marquesas islands, where he lived for a time. His first book, an account of that time, Typee, became a bestseller and Melville became known as the "man who lived among the cannibals." After literary success in the late 1840s, the public indifference to Moby-Dick (1851) put an end to his career as a popular author. During his later decades, Melville worked at the New York Customs House and published volumes of poetry which are now esteemed but were not read in his lifetime.

When he died in 1891, Melville was almost completely forgotten. It was not until the "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century that his work won recognition, especially Moby-Dick, which was hailed as one of the literary masterpieces of both American and world literature. He was the first writer to have his works collected and published by the Library of America.


Works

Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846)

Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847)

Mardi: And a Voyage Thither (1849)

Redburn: His First Voyage (1849)

White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War (1850)

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851)
VOL. I      VOL. II

Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853) (short story)

The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles (1854) (novella)

"Benito Cereno" (1855)

Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855)

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857)

Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) (poetry collection)

Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876) (epic poem)

John Marr and Other Sailors (1888) (poetry collection)

Timoleon (1891) (poetry collection)

Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) (1891 unfinished, published posthumously in 1924; authoritative edition in 1962)