Melville, Herman (1819-1891)
Melville was born in New York City
1839 he shipped to Liverpool, England, as a cabin boy
1841 sailed for the South Seas in 1841 on the whaler Acushnet. After an 18-month voyage Melville deserted the ship in the Marquesas Islands and with a companion lived for a month among the natives, who were cannibals.
1843 he enlisted as a seaman on the U.S. Navy frigate United States
1844 discharged from the Navy, began to write novels based on his experiences
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846)
Omoo, a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847)
Mardi (1849)
Redburn, His First Voyage (1849),
White-Jacket, or the World in a Man-of-War (1850)
1850 Melville moved to a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he became an intimate friend of the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom Melville dedicated his masterpiece,
Moby Dick; or The Whale (1851).
Pierre: or the Ambiguities (1852),
Israel Potter (1855),
The Piazza Tales (1856)
“Benito Cereno” and “Bartleby the Scrivener” and the ten descriptive sketches of the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, titled “The Encantadas.”
The Confidence-Man (1857)
Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)
Clarel (1876)
Billy Budd, Foretopman (1924)