Having left most of Moby-Dick with a printer in 1851, Herman
Melville lamented to Nathaniel Hawthorne that he would go down in
history as a "man who lived among the cannibals!" Until his death
in 1891, Melville was known as the author of Typee (1846) and Omoo
(1847) -- both semiautobiographical travel books, and literary
sensations because of Melville's sensual description of the South
Sea islanders. (A transatlantic furor raged over whether the books
were fact or fiction.) His most famous character was Fayaway -- not
Captain Ahab, not the White Whale, not Bartleby, and definitely not
Billy Budd, whose story remained unpublished until 1924.
Herman Melville, 1819-1851 is the first of a two-volume project
constituting the fullest biography of Melville ever published.
Hershel Parker, co-editor of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of
The Writings of Herman Melville, reveals with extraordinary
precision the twisted turmoil of Melville's life, beginning with
his Manhattan boyhood where, surrounded by tokens of heroic
ancestors, he witnessed his father's dissipation of two family
fortunes. Having attended the best Manhattan boys' schools, Herman
was withdrawn from classes at the Albany Academy at age 12, shortly
after his father's death. Outwardly docile, inwardly rebellious, he
worked where his family put him -- in a bank, in his brother's fur
store -- until, at age 21, he escaped his responsibilities to his
impoverished mother and his six siblings and sailed to the Pacific
as a whaleman.
A year and a half after his return, Melville was a famous
author, thanks to the efforts of his older brother in finding
publishers. Three years later he was married, the man of the
family, a NewYorker -- and still not equipped to do the responsible
thing: write more books in the vein that had proven so popular.
After the disappointing failure of Mardi, which he had hoped would
prove him a literary genius, Melville wrote two more saleable books
in four months -- Redburn and White-Jacket. Early in 1850 he began
work on Moby-Dick. Moving to a farmhouse in the Berkshires, he
finished the book with majestic companions -- Hawthorne a few miles
to the south, and Mount Greylock looming to the north. Before he
completed the book he made the most reckless gamble of his life,
borrowing left and right (like his wastrel patrician father), sure
that a book so great would outsell even Typee.
Melville lovers have known Hershel Parker as a newsbringer --
from the shocking false report headlined "Herman Melville Crazy" to
the tantalizing title of Melville's lost novel, The Isle of the
Cross. Carrying on the late Jay Leyda's The Melville Log, Parker in
the last decade has transcribed thousands of new documents into
what will be published as the multi-volume Leyda-Parker The New
Melville Log. Now, exploring the psychological narrative implicit
in that mass of documents, Parker recreates episode after episode
that will prove stunningly new, even to Melvilleans.
General
Imprint: |
Johns Hopkins University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
October 2005 |
First published: |
August 2005 |
Authors: |
Hershel Parker
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 49mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
928 |
Edition: |
New edition |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8018-8185-5 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
General
|
LSN: |
0-8018-8185-4 |
Barcode: |
9780801881855 |
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