Herman Melville Biography

Herman Melville belongs to that group of artists whose works grew in prominence and stature after their death. Initially titled The Whale, Moby Dick was published in 1851, a year before Harriet Beecher Stowe was to publish Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the year after Nathanial Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter. Melville dedicated the book to Nathaniel Hawthorne, stating, “In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne.”

Melville was born on August 1, 1819, in New York City, to Maria Gansevoort Melville and Allan Melville. He was the third among eight children. While growing up, he loved hearing tales of seafaring adventures and was enthralled with the yarns of whaling expeditions. His father, Allan, was a successful imports merchant until he suffered losses, which made the family move to Albany in the late 1820s. Allan never recovered his fortunes, and he died when Herman was still a child. At the age of 13, Melville began working at a bank to support his family. He also worked as a school teacher, and at the age of 19, took up a job as a sailor on merchant ships, starting as a cabin boy on the merchant ship St. Lawrence. In January 1841, Melville set sail aboard the whaling ship Acushent. After a string of adventures, some of them unsuccessful, Melville left the sea and settled at his mother’s home in the fall of 1844, intent on writing about his adventures.

In 1846, Melville published his first novel, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, based upon an embellished version of his experience in the Marquesas Islands where he had lived among a native tribe of cannibals for a month. His second novel, Omoo (1847), was based on his experiences among natives in Tahiti. Both the books were popularly received. It was at this time he married Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Chief Justice of Massachusetts. However, the next few books weren’t well-received. When he embarked on the writing of Moby Dick in 1850, he described the book to his publisher in England as “a romance of adventure, founded upon certain wild legends in the Southern Sperm Whale Fisheries.” Moby Dick, unfortunately, failed to impress readers and critics and only sold 3,000 copies during Melville’s lifetime.

Unlike his contemporaries, Melville’s career declined with the publication of Moby Dick. When he passed away in 1891, a local newspaper referred to him as a “long-forgotten author.” His work was widely acclaimed only in the 1920s, whereupon Melville was recognized as one of America’s greatest authors.