HERMAN MELVILLE
August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891

"It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently
throwing oneself helplessly open."

~ He was the third child of eight, born into a family of socialites.

~ One of his grandfathers participated in the Boston Tea Party.

~ His father, an importer of French dry goods, wrote of his young son, "he's backward in speech and somewhat slow in comprehension... of a docile and amiable disposition."

~ A bout of scarlet fever in 1826 left Melville with permanently weakened eyesight.

~ Six years later, his father died.

~ Melville's mother moved the children to the village of Lansingburg, on the banks of the Hudson River.

~ Melville's oldest brother, Gansevoort, assumed responsibility for the family and took over his father's business.

~ Melville loved reading Shakespeare as well as historical, anthropological and technical works.

~ In 1839 Melville shipped out as a cabin boy on the whaler Acushnet. He later joined the US Navy, and sailed both the Atlantic and the South Seas.

~ During these years he was a clerk and bookkeeper in Honolulu and lived briefly among the Typee cannibals in the Marquesas Islands.

~ When he returned home in his mid-20s, his family encouraged him to write about his exotic tales.

~ In 1847 Melville married Elisabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of Massachusetts. They had four children.

~ After three years in New York, he bought a farm, Arrowhead, near Nathaniel Hawthorne's home at Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

~ They became good friends, and it was Hawthorne who suggested Melville change his current project from a story full of details about whaling to an allegorical novel.

~ One of Melville's inspirations for his masterpiece was an article by Jeremiah N. Reynolds, titled "Mocha Dick: Or, the White Whale of the Pacific." It told of an albino sperm whale that supposedly sunk ships and drowned men.

~ When Moby Dick, originally titled The Whale, was published in 1851, it did not equal the fanfare he had received in the 1840s. Although some critics recognized its brilliance, most readers of his previous works were disappointed.

~ More and more, Melville withdrew from people. Friends feared for his sanity.

~ He gave up on novels and turned to poetry. He didn't earn enough money to support his family, however, and had to depend on his wealthy father-in-law.

~ At 33 years old, Melville felt like an utter failure. After a disastrous fire destroyed most of his books at his New York publishers' building, he had a nervous breakdown.

~ To recover from the breakdown, he embarked on a long trip to Europe and the Holy Land.

~ In 1862 Melville moved to New York, where he became appointed customs inspector on the New York docks. Finally, he had a steady income.

~ In 1867 his son Malcolm accidentally shot himself after a quarrel with his father.

~ When Melville died at his home on East 26th Street, and buried beside his wife Elizabeth in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York, it was noted with only one obituary.

~ An unfinished manuscript, Billy Budd, was found in his desk after he died. It was first published in 1924.

~ During Melville's lifetime, Moby Dick sold only 3,000 copies. Today, "Call me Ishmael" is the most famous opening line in literature, and the book is considered one of the greatest novels of all time.