Moby Dick

Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. His family was descended from Revolutionary War officers and participants in the Boston Tea Party. Melville eventually joined the merchant marines, the US Navy and a South Seas whaling ship, occupations that would give shape to his first novel, the romantic adventure Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, published in 1846. The debut was successful, and Melville published Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas the following year. Also in 1847, after a short courtship, Melville married Elizabeth Knapp Shaw, daughter of Massachusetts’ chief justice. Melville had four children with Shaw. After publishing three more novels – Mardi: And a Voyage Thither, Redburn: His First Voyage, and White-Jacket – to tepid critical response, Melville published Moby Dick. The tragic epic was a commercial flop, and by 1865, Melville had given up trying to earn a living through his writing, though he continued to write poetry until 1876. Starting in 1866, Melville served as a customs inspector in New York for 20 years. His books were out of print by 1867. That year, his son Malcolm accidentally shot himself and died. Compounding the tragedy, Melville’s second son Stanwix died in a hospital in 1886 after a prolonged illness. These events contributed to Melville’s depression, which lasted many years. On September 28, 1891, while completing the new novel Billy Budd, Sailor, the 72-year-old Melville died of a heart attack. Literary scholars revived his work – including his late-life poetry and books – starting in the late 1910s, and today, Melville’s Moby Dick continues its reign as a great American novel.