Herman Melville

A. Robert Lee (Nihon University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.2: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth Century, 1783-1900.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University)

Dates

Born 1 Aug 1819
Died 28 Sep 1891
Activity 1839-1891

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Lecturer
Mariner/ Navigator/ Seaman
Novelist
Poet
Story-writer
Travel writer

Resources

Melville's Works

Save to Bookshelf

“Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at all. From my twenty-fifth year I date my life…”. So runs Melville's celebrated letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne for June 1st 1851. Writing from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and not a little heady at the discovery of the author of

The Scarlet Letter

(1850) for his Berkshire Hills neighbour in nearby Lenox, he was mid-way into composing the South Seas whale-epic in due course to be dedicated to Hawthorne and titled

Moby-Dick

(1851), and which would be the source of his own enduring literary fame. Melville's declaration carries all his typical infectious vitality of sound and sense. Few writers, American or otherwise, and of his own time or not, bring to the literary page a body of experience more lived first-hand and yet cannier in hidden…

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2226 words

Citation: Lee, A. Robert. "Herman Melville". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 July 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3076, accessed 03 December 2024.]