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Herman Melville Sparknotes

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Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819, to Allan and Maria Gansevoort Melvill. In the mid-1820s, young Herman became ill with scarlet fever. He soon overcame the fever, though it left his vision permanently impaired. The family did enjoy a prosperous life for many years because of Allan Melvill's success as a importer and merchant. Although he was borrowing heavily to finance his business needs, and after he moved the family upstate to Albany in a failing attempt to branch into the fur trade in 1830, the family's fortune took a big hit. Allan died suddenly in 1832, leaving finances to dwindle significantly.
The eldest son, Gansevoort, took control of the family's fur and cap business in New York, while Herman Melville …show more content…

Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846), a combination of his personal tales and imagined events, drew attention for its detailed descriptions of seafaring life and a seemingly too-wild-to-believe plot. The author followed in 1847 with an equally successful sequel, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas. His career skyrocketed; and in 1847 married Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of Massachusetts. The two had four children.
The author in 1851 released what would become his signature work, Moby-Dick. Moby-Dick, is based on both Melville's years of experience aboard whaleships and the real-life disaster of the Essex whaleship. Even though Moby-Dick is known by all, Melville didn't live to witness that success. The book never brought him any wealth or respect during his lifetime. Early critics were unimpressed by the novel.
Melville released a series of lectures in the late 1850s, and later he began a 20 year career as a customs inspector in New York City. He also published a collection called Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War in 1866. In 1876, he published the epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, based on a previous trip to the

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