Herman Melville

Herman Melville (originally Melvill) lived from August 1, 1819, to September 28, 1891, and was an American author active during the American Renaissance. He is best remembered for *Moby-Dick* (1851), *Typee* (1846)—a fictionalized travelogue based on his time in Polynesia—and the novella *Billy Budd, Sailor*, which was published after his death. When he died, Melville was largely unknown to the general public. A revival of interest in his work began in 1919, the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and *Moby-Dick* later came to be regarded as one of the Great American Novels.

Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a wealthy merchant. When his father died in 1832, the family fell into severe financial hardship. In 1839, Melville went to sea as an ordinary sailor on the merchant ship *St. Lawrence*, and in 1841 he joined the whaler *Acushnet*. He deserted the ship in the Marquesas Islands. His first book, *Typee*, and its sequel, *Omoo* (1847), were adventure stories drawn from his encounters with island peoples. Their popularity gave him enough money to marry Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of Boston judge Lemuel Shaw. His next book, *Mardi* (1849), a romance not based on his own experiences, was poorly received. *Redburn* (1849) and *White-Jacket* (1850), both based on his time at sea as a young man of good family, earned respectable reviews but sold poorly, failing to support his growing family.

Melville’s literary ambitions grew with *Moby-Dick*, which took about eighteen months to write, but it failed to attract an audience. Critics also scorned his psychological novel *Pierre: or, The Ambiguities* (1852). From 1853 to 1856, he published short fiction in magazines, including “Benito Cereno” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and released his final prose work, *The Confidence-Man* (1857). He moved to New York City in 1863 and eventually became a U.S. customs inspector.

After that, Melville turned his creative energy to poetry. *Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War* (1866) reflected on the moral issues of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child, Malcolm, died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville’s metaphysical epic *Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land* was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son, Stanwix, died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his final years, he privately published two poetry volumes and left one unpublished. The novella *Billy Budd* was unfinished at his death but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died of cardiovascular disease in 1891.

Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819, the third of eight children of Allan Melvill and Maria Gansevoort Melvill. His siblings—Gansevoort, Helen Maria, Augusta, Allan, Catherine, Frances Priscilla, and Thomas (who later became governor of Sailors’ Snug Harbor)—played important roles in his life and career. Allan Melvill came from a well-established Boston family and spent much time away from New York, traveling to Europe as a commission merchant and importer of French dry goods.

Both of Melville’s grandfathers were involved in the American Revolutionary War, and Melville later took pride in his “double revolutionary descent.” Major Thomas Melvill took part in the Boston Tea Party, and his maternal grandfather, General Peter Gansevoort, led the defense of Fort Stanwix in New York in 1777.

Around 1800, Major Melvill sent his son Allan to France instead of college; Allan spent two years in Paris and became fluent in French. In 1814, Allan, a Unitarian like his father, married Maria Gansevoort, who followed her family’s stricter, Bible-focused Dutch Reformed Calvinism. The Gansevoorts’ severe Protestantism meant Maria was well versed in the Bible, in both English and Dutch, the language spoken at home.

Nearly three weeks after his birth, on August 19, Melville was baptized at home by a minister of the South Reformed Dutch Church. During the 1820s, he lived a privileged life in a household with three or more servants. Every four years, the family moved to larger, more elegant homes, settling on Broadway in 1828. Allan Melvill lived beyond his means, borrowing heavily from his father and his mother-in-law. While Maria’s view of his finances is unknown, biographer Hershel Parker suggests she believed her mother’s money was unlimited and that she was entitled to a large share. Biographer Andrew Delbanco notes it is “impossible to know” how well the parents hid the truth from their children.

In 1830, the Gansevoorts stopped supporting the Melvilles financially, leaving Allan in debt to both families for over $20,000. Yet biographer Newton Arvin argues that the happiness of Melville’s early childhood came less from wealth than from the “exceptionally tender and affectionate spirit” within the family. Arvin describes Allan as “a man of real sensibility and a particularly warm and loving father,” and Maria as “warmly maternal, simple, robust, and affectionately devoted.”

Melville began his education at age six. In 1824, the family moved to a new house at 33 Bleecker Street in Manhattan. The following year, Herman and his brother Gansevoort enrolled in New York Male High School.