August 2, 2019

Yesterday, August 1, was the 200th anniversary of the birth of the celebrated United States author Herman Melville, in 1819. Melville ranks among the major authors of American literature. He wrote Moby-Dick, one of the world’s great novels, and his reputation rests largely on this book. But many of his other works are literary creations of a high order—blending fact, fiction, adventure, and symbolism. Melville’s vast personal experience in faraway places was remarkable even in the footloose and exploratory world of the 1800′s. Melville brought to his extraordinary adventures a vivid imagination and a philosophical skepticism, as well as a remarkable skill in handling the evolving American language. Melville was born in New York City. He died there, too, on Sept. 28, 1891.

Herman Melville was born 200 years ago on Aug. 1, 1819. Credit: Library of Congress

A number of events are marking Melville’s 200th birthday anniversary in 2019. In June, the Melville Society hosted a commemorative conference called “Melville’s Origins” at New York University. In Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Berkshire Historical Society is celebrating “Melville at 200” August 1 to 4 with the unveiling of a memorial plaque, a marathon reading of Moby-Dick, and events at Melville’s farm, Arrowhead (where Melville wrote Moby-Dick and other works). In Philadelphia, The Rosenbach museum’s exhibition “American Voyager: Herman Melville at 200” will display the author’s manuscripts, first editions, and whaling artifacts from October 2 through April 5, 2020.

This illustration from an early edition of Moby-Dick depicts the fearsome white whale. Credit: Public Domain

Melville lived his first 11 years in New York City. In 1831, his family moved to Albany, New York. Melville worked a variety of jobs before sailing to Liverpool, England, in 1837 as a cabin boy on a merchant ship. He described this trip in his novel Redburn. Melville returned to America and signed on as a seaman on the newly built whaling ship Acushnet for a trip in the Pacific Ocean. From this trip came the basic experiences recorded in several of his books, and above all, the whaling knowledge he put into Moby-Dick.

Melville sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts, on Jan. 3, 1841. He stayed on the Acushnet for 18 months. After the ship put in at Nuka Hiva in the Marquesas Islands, he and a shipmate deserted. The two men headed inland until they came to the lovely valley of the Typees, a Polynesian tribe with a reputation as fierce cannibals. But the natives turned out to be gentle, charming hosts. Melville described his experiences with them in Typee.

Melville lived in the valley for about a month. He then joined another whaling ship, but he soon deserted it with other sailors in a semimutiny at Tahiti. After a few days in a local jail, Melville and a new friend began roaming the beautiful and unspoiled islands of Tahiti and Moorea. Melville described his life during these wanderings in the novel Omoo.

After short service on a third whaling ship, Melville landed at Hawaii, where he lived doing odd jobs. On Aug. 17, 1843, he enlisted as a seaman on the U.S. Navy frigate United States. He recounted his long voyage around Cape Horn in the novel White-Jacket. Melville arrived in Boston in October 1844. He was released from the Navy and headed home to Albany, his imagination overflowing with his adventures.

Melville wrote about his experiences so attractively that he soon became one of the most popular writers of his time. The books that made his reputation were Typee (1846); Omoo (1847); Mardi (1849), a complex allegorical romance set in the South Seas; Redburn (1849); and White-Jacket (1850).

Melville then began Moby-Dick, another “whaling voyage,” as he called it, similar to his successful travel books. He had almost completed the book when he met fellow author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne inspired him to radically revise the whaling documentary into a novel of both universal significance and literary complexity.

Moby-Dick; or The Whale (1851), on one level, is the story of the hunt for Moby Dick, a fierce white whale supposedly known to sailors of Melville’s time. Captain Ahab is the captain of the whaling ship Pequod. He has lost a leg in an earlier battle with Moby Dick, and he is determined to catch the whale. The novel brilliantly describes the dangerous and often violent life on a whaling ship, and it includes information on the whaling industry and a discussion of the nature of whales. On another level, Moby-Dick is a deeply symbolic story. The whale symbolizes the mysterious and complex force of the universe, and Captain Ahab represents the heroic struggle against the limiting and crippling constrictions that confront an intelligent person.

Melville’s popularity began to decline with the publication of his masterpiece. The novel, either ignored or misunderstood by critics and readers, damaged Melville’s reputation as a writer. When Melville followed Moby-Dick with the pessimistic and tragic novel Pierre (1853), his readers began to desert him, calling him either eccentric or mad. The public was ready to accept unusual and exciting adventures, but they did not want ironic, frightening exposures of the terrible double meanings in life.

Melville turned to writing short stories. Two of them, “Benito Cereno” and “Bartleby the Scrivener,” rank as classics. But the haunting and disturbing question of the meaning of life that hovered over the stories also displeased the public. In 1855, Melville published Israel Potter, a novel set during the American Revolution (1775-1783). After The Confidence-Man (1856), a bitter satire on humanity, Melville gave up writing.

Melville worked as deputy inspector of customs in the Port of New York from 1866 until his retirement in 1885. He then began writing again. He died in 1891, leaving behind the manuscript of Billy Budd, Sailor. This short novel, first published in 1924 and considered Melville’s finest book after Moby-Dick, is a symbolic story about the clash between innocence and evil and between social forms and individual liberty.

The 1920′s marked the start of a Melville revival among critics and readers. By the 1940′s, Americans at last recognized his literary genius. His reputation has since spread throughout the world and continued to grow.

January 18, 2019

Tomorrow, January 19, marks 210 years since the birth of American poet, short-story writer, and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe in 1809. Poe’s stormy personal life and his haunting poems and stories combined to make him one of the most famous figures in American literary history.

Edgar Allan Poe was born 210 years ago on Jan. 19, 1809. Credit: © Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Poe’s influence on literature was immense. His short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) is considered the first modern detective story. His reviews of American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne mark him as the first significant theorist of the modern short story. His poetry and his stories of terror are among the most influential in modern literature. Writers as diverse as the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky have used Poe’s stories to launch their own fictional experiments.

Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia includes the house where the American author lived in 1843 and 1844. Credit: National Park Service

Poe worked as an editor and contributor to several magazines. He unsuccessfully tried to found and edit his own magazine, which would have granted him financial security and artistic control in what he considered a hostile literary marketplace. His famous works include the short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Gold Bug,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” His poem “The Raven” is one of the most famous works in American literature.

Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He lived parts of his life there and in Richmond, Virginia; the United Kingdom; New York City; Philadelphia; and in Baltimore, Maryland, where he died on Oct. 3, 1849. The cause of his death was listed as “congestion of the brain,” though the precise circumstances of his death have never been fully explained.

December 31, 2018

On Jan. 1, 1919, 100 years ago tomorrow, American author J. D. Salinger was born in New York City. Salinger gained fame for writing The Catcher in the Rye (1951), one of the greatest novels in American literature. Salinger shied from his fame, however, and isolated himself in rural New Hampshire from the 1950′s until his death on Jan. 27, 2010.

American author J.D. Salinger was born 100 years ago on Jan. 1, 1919, in New York City. Credit: © University of New Hampshire/Gado/Getty Images

The hero and narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is a prep school student named Holden Caulfield, who is expelled for failing grades. Adrift in New York City, Holden learns to face both the phoniness he finds in the adult world and his own weaknesses. In Catcher, and in much of the fiction that followed, Salinger humorously and convincingly captured the speech, gestures, and feelings of the young. A staple in schools throughout the United States, The Catcher in the Rye came to symbolize restless youth everywhere.

Salinger’s Nine Stories (1953) introduces the Glass family, central figures of the author’s later works. One story in this book focuses on Seymour Glass, an eccentric genius whose suicide haunts the family in other fiction. In Franny and Zooey (1961), Franny Glass suffers a spiritual breakdown. Her brother Zooey blames his older brothers for Franny’s condition, but he draws on their wisdom to help her. Salinger also focused on Seymour in three stories first published in The New Yorker magazine. These stories are “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” (1955), “Seymour: An Introduction” (1959), and “Hapworth 16, 1924″ (1965).

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Salinger’s birth, the author’s works are being reissued and a series of Salinger-themed events in bookstores and libraries will take place across the country in 2019, including an exhibition from Salinger’s archive at the New York Public Library.