Herman Melville

Epic card · No. 11919

Herman Melville (born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American writer of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851), Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia, and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was not well known to the public, but 1919, the centennial of his birth, was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick would eventually be considered one of the Great American Novels. Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to the sea in 1839 as a common sailor on the merchant ship St. Lawrence and then in 1841, on the whaler Acushnet. However, he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the...

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