Herman Melville was born August 1, 1819 in New
York City to Allan Melvill and Maria Gansevoort Melvill. The surname was
usually spelled without the final “e” until Maria added it after her husband’s
death. His father was an import merchant specializing in accessories. Once his
business started to decline, Allan started recklessly borrowing money. The
Melvill family moved northward to Manhattan, which many believe was the family’s
disguise that their fortunes were declining. In October of 1830, Allan and then
eleven-year-old Herman fled to Albany, where Maria and the rest of the children
had been living. Allan had lost most of his money and was almost to the point
of bankruptcy at this time. Many people say that this was the end of Herman’s
boyhood. A few years after falling into bankruptcy, Allan Melvill died, leaving
behind his wife and children who had barely anything. Herman
and his brother were forced to withdraw from school because the family no
longer had the finances.
After another string of bad luck; Maria, the
younger children and Herman moved to the village of Lansingburgh, ten miles
north of Albany. In the spring of 1839, Herman began his near 4 years of sea
adventures which would go on to inspire his books Typee and Omoo. After a
few years of writing, Herman and Elizabeth Shaw promised themselves to each
other. They would be married on August 4, 1847 and go on to have four children
together. In 1850 the couple purchased a farmhouse in Pittsfield, Massachusetts
called Arrowhead.
Over the next several years, he would go on to
write Redburn, White-Jacket and the
first chapters of what would become Moby-Dick.
After months of writing, Moby-Dick was
published in 1851. During Herman’s time at Arrowhead, he became good friends with
author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who inspired him during his writing of Moby-Dick. By 1853, after Herman had
written Pierre, the men’s friendship
had become less casual. Some speculate that Melville may have gotten close to a
secret in Hawthorne’s personal life and Hawthorne had pushed him away. However,
no one truly knows what tore these two apart. Later that year, “Bartleby, the
Scrivener” was published in two installments, in November and December of 1852
in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine. Five years
after “Bartleby, the Scrivener” was published, Melville wrote his last
full-length novel, The Confidence-Man.
In the hopes of making more money Melville entered the field of lecturing and
from 1857-1860 traveled around the South Seas mainly, to lecture. In 1867,
Elizabeth and Herman’s oldest son Malcolm shot himself in what appeared to be
suicide. Several years after his eldest sons death, Melville’s 16,000-line epic
poem, Clarel, was published in 1876.
Peter Gansevoort, his uncle paid the costs for this publication. Despite having
spent many years writing this poem, it’s publication failed horribly and only
about 113 were ever sold.
As his professional and personal lives were
declining, Melville published two collections of poems for his friends and family,
John Marr and Timoleon in 1888 and 1891. One of the poems interested him so much
so that he began to rework it as a novella. Melville worked on it on and off
for many years before dying on September 28, 1891, leaving it unfinished. It is
now known as Billy Budd, Sailor. Although
Herman Melville died at the decline of his career, his works have been and will
continue to be read by many generations to come.
“For
some readers, the Melville who speaks most directly to the mind and heart is
the chastened author of Billy Budd. For
others, the true Melville will always be the boisterous young author of Moby-Dick. Still others have found, with
replenished gratitude, that there is a season in life for each” –Andrew
Delbanco
Delbanco, Andrew. Melville: His World
and Work.
Hayes, Kevin J. The
Cambridge Introduction to Herman Melville.
Well-written!
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