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Classic Authors: Herman Melville

© Susan Jensen

"Call me Ishmael . . . " Thus begins one of the greatest novels of all time, Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851). Today, billions of readers have trudged through Melville's tale of the great white whale, heralding its creator as a literary genius. Thus, it hardly seems possible that when the great author died on September 28, 1891, few people mourned, for no one remembered him. He passed away in the same obscurity in which he had spent most of his life.

Herman Melville was born on August 1, 1819, in New York City, New York. His father, Allan Melville, worked as a merchant importer. Allan died when Herman was in his early teens, leaving his wife to care for eight children, and the mountainous debt he had incurred during his lifetime. According to Wilson Biographies, Herman's mother, Maria Gansevoort Melville, treated her son coldly, although he took on the burden of supporting the family. Finally, Herman could not take it any longer. Humiliated by his poverty and alienated by his mother's frigid nature, he took to the sea.

The adventures Herman found on the high seas would form the basis for several of his novels, including Moby Dick. In 1837, 18-year-old Herman became a sea-ships boy on a merchant ship heading for Liverpool, England. Several years later, he signed on as a sailor aboard the whaler Acushnet. Angered by the poor treatment they were receiving aboard the Acushnet, Herman and a friend jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. They soon fell prey to a cannibalistic tribe which would become the subject of Herman's novel Typee (1846). While at sea, he also participated in a mutiny, which landed him in jail. Finally, Herman joined the U.S. Navy, and was discharged in Boston in October 1844.

Using his escapades at sea, Herman created several adventure novels, which became very popular. He continued to publish novels rapidly, but never experienced a lot of success with his writing. He quickly became disillusioned, and ceased writing anything but poetry. Herman returned to New York in 1866 to work as a customs agent, where he labored until his retirement. Herman Melville experienced a brief but important friendship with writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Herman had purchased an 18th Century farmhouse in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, only miles away from Hawthorne's home. In the short time before the relationship cooled, the two authors shared ideas and friendship.

Although he published many books in his lifetime, Herman Melville died alone and misunderstood.

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