List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
The Flight of the Patrician Wastrel and His Second Son: 1830
Herman Melvill's World, 1819–1830: Manhattan, Albany, Boston
"The Terrors of Death": Albany, 1831–1832
The "Cholera Year":1832–1833
In the Shadow of the Young Furrier: Herman as Clerk, 1833–1835
Clerk, Farmer, Teacher, Polemicist: 1836–May 1838
Herman in Lansingburgh: Full-grown and Useless, May 1838–May
1839
Sailor and Schoolteacher: 1839–1840
West to Seek His Fortune: 1840
The First Year of Whaling: 1841
Whaler and Runaway: 1842
Beachcomber and Whaler: 1842–1843
Lahaina and Honolulu: 1843
Ordinary Seaman on the United States: 1843–1844
Home but Not Home: October 1844
The Sailor, the Orator, and the Grand Contested Election: 1844
The Sailor at the Writing Desk: 1844–1845
A Manuscript but No Publisher: 1845
A Modern Crusoe: 1846
International Author and the Man of the Family: 1846
The Resurrection of Toby: 1846
Winning Elizabeth Shaw and Winning the Harpers: 1846
Office-Seeker and Reviewer: 1847
Triumphant Author, Triumphant Lover: 1847
Scandal and Marriage: 1847
Newlyweds in New York City: 1847
Mardi as Island-Hopping Symposium:1847–1848
Dollars Be Damned: "The Red Year Forty-Eight"
Malcolm and the Face of Mardi: 1849
Redburn and White-Jacket: Summer 1849
London and a Peek at Continental Life: Fall 1849
The Breaching of Mocha Dick: January 1850
Hiding Out on the Cannibal Island: February–June 1850
Pittsfield and Hawthorne: June–7 August 1850
Hawthorne and His Mosses: 8 August–September 1850
Writing at Arrowhead: October 1850–Mid-January 1851
Damned By Dollars: Mid-January–1 May 1851
The Final Dash at The Whale: May–September 1851
Melville in Triumph: The Whale and the Kraken, September–November
1851Genealogical Charts
Documentation
Index
From the Associate General Editor of The Writings of Herman Melville, the first of a two-volume project constituting the fullest biography of Melville ever published.
Hershel Parker, H. Fletcher Brown Professor in the Department of English at the University of Delaware, is co-editor with Harrison Hayford of the landmark 1967 Norton Critical Edition of 'Moby-Dick' and Associate General Editor of 'The Writings of Herman Melville'. His previous publications include 'Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons' and 'Reading "Billy Budd."' He is also editor of an edition of Melville's 'Pierre' (1995), illustrated by Maurice Sendak.
"A stunningly magnificent biography that displays the finest kind of sympathetic imagination. With this first volume, Hershel Parker has become, quite simply, 'the' most important Melville scholar of all time. Beyond any doubt, this will be the standard biography of Melville for many decades to come."--Harrison Hayford, general editor of 'The Writings of Herman Melville' "This biography will be definitive. Impeccable in its scholarship, 'Herman Melville' reads like a good novel. Parker moves across the material with an ease born of absolute mastery of the facts and a storyteller's sense of dramatic detail."--John T. Irwin, Decker Professor in Humanities, The Johns Hopkins University "As this first of a projected two-volume biography makes abundantly clear, Melville's life is above all else an enthralling tale of literary genius in the act of self-creation. Hershel Parker is a scholar of notable fastidiousness, and his achievement here is to establish Herman Melville's life as one of the great literary family sagas of the nineteenth century -- a narrative at least as colorful and incident-rich as anything published by Melville himself."--Literary Review "A monumental achievement...The fullest account of the writer ever published. Its scholarship is impeccable, its prose clear and swift, its scope awe-inspiring."--Washington Post Book World
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