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Herman Melville

1819–1891 · 72 years Tier II

A whaler who deserted ship, then spent 19 years inspecting cargo

Portrait of Herman Melville — Joseph Oriel Eaton — 1870 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Melville was twelve when his father died owing more than 20,000 dollars, the wreckage of an import business that had already failed once. The family scattered him into work: bank clerk at fourteen, a term teaching school in rural Massachusetts, a course in surveying that led nowhere. In June 1839 he signed onto a merchant ship bound for Liverpool, and in January 1841 onto the whaler Acushnet. He deserted at the Marquesas Islands after eighteen months at sea, lived briefly among islanders the crew called cannibals, and worked his way home through Tahiti and Honolulu before finishing the voyage as an ordinary seaman in the United States Navy. He came back with material, not a plan.

He turned the Marquesas material into Typee in 1846, and it made him famous overnight, an actual bestseller in an age of few of them. Omoo and Mardi followed, then a scramble of production, Redburn and White-Jacket both finished in 1849 to cover debts. Moby-Dick came out in October 1851, dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, and sold poorly enough that it never earned back its advance in his lifetime. Pierre, a year later, was received so badly that one newspaper ran the headline "Herman Melville Crazy." By the mid-1850s he was writing short fiction for magazines, Bartleby, the Scrivener and Benito Cereno among it, because magazines still paid when books did not. By 1876 every book he had published was out of print.

The writing stopped supporting him, so in December 1866 he took a customs inspectorship on the New York docks, a post he held for 19 years, checking manifests for cargo far duller than anything he had written about. Across an entire writing life his books earned him just over 10,000 dollars. His son Malcolm died of a self-inflicted gunshot in 1867, at eighteen, in a locked bedroom of the family's own house, ruled an accident by an inquest that satisfied almost nobody. A second son, Stanwix, drifted west and died of tuberculosis in San Francisco in 1886, estranged from the family for years. Melville kept writing anyway, quietly, in poetry collections printed in runs of 25 copies that almost nobody read.

He retired from the customs house in December 1885 after his wife inherited money, and died of heart disease in his Manhattan apartment on September 28, 1891. The New York Times obituary misspelled his best-known book as "Mobie Dick." He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, largely forgotten. The turn came in 1919, the centennial of his birth, when critics rediscovered Moby-Dick and began arguing for its scale and strangeness. Billy Budd, left unfinished in his desk, reached print for the first time in 1924. By the middle of the 20th century the book the Times could not spell was routinely ranked among the greatest novels the country had produced.

Lifespan

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Herman Melville's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Typee book
His Marquesas memoir, and his only real bestseller 1846
Moby-Dick book
Dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, never earned back its advance in his life 1851
Bartleby, the Scrivener article
Magazine fiction written because magazines still paid 1853
The Confidence-Man book
His last published novel before a long silence 1857
Billy Budd, Sailor book
Left unfinished in his desk, published 33 years after he died 1924

Life in brief

with age at each point

January 28, 1832 aged 12 His father dies owing more than 20,000 dollars Herman was twelve. The family's finances never fully recovered.
January 1841 aged 21 Signs onto the whaler Acushnet
1842 aged ~23 Deserts the Acushnet at the Marquesas Islands He lived briefly among islanders before working his way home via Tahiti and Honolulu.
1846 aged ~27 Publishes Typee and becomes an overnight bestseller
August 4, 1847 aged 28 Marries Elizabeth Shaw
October 18, 1851 aged 32 Moby-Dick is published in Britain as The Whale The American edition followed weeks later. It sold poorly and never recovered its advance.
December 1866 aged 47 Takes a post as a New York customs inspector He held it for 19 years.
1867 aged ~48 His son Malcolm dies of a self-inflicted gunshot at eighteen
September 28, 1891 aged 72 Dies of heart disease in Manhattan, largely forgotten