Queer Places:
Lansingburgh Academy, 525 4th Ave, Troy, NY 12182, Stati Uniti
The Albany Academy, 135 Academy Rd, Albany, NY 12208, Stati Uniti
Columbia University (Ivy League), 116th St and Broadway, New York, NY 10027
6 Pearl St, New York, NY 10004, Stati Uniti
55 Cortlandt St, New York, NY 10007, Stati Uniti
104 E 26th St, New York, NY 10010, Stati Uniti
Bleecker St, New York, NY, Stati Uniti
675 Broadway, New York, NY 10012, Stati Uniti
25 Craven St, London WC2N 5NT, Regno Unito
Arrowhead, 780 Holmes Rd, Pittsfield, MA 01201, USA
Woodlawn Cemetery, E 233rd St & Webster Avenue, Bronx, NY 10470, Stati Uniti

Herman Melville[a] (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851). His work was almost forgotten during his last 30 years. Herman Melville's Moby Dick explores the intense relationships of men at sea and is dedicated his masterpiece to his friend and fellow artist Nathaniel Hawthorne. One of the great literary friendships of the XIX century was that shared by New England writers Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville was devastated as Hawthorne grew distant from him. Most scholars agree that Melville's Monody is really an elegy to Hawthorne, summing uo his grief over love rejected. In Moby Dick (1851), which Melville dedicated to Hawthorne, he describes the interaction between the South Seas islander Queequeg and the Yankee sailor Ismael, who share a bed one night at New Bedford's fictious Spouter Inn.

His writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. He developed a complex, baroque style; the vocabulary is rich and original, a strong sense of rhythm infuses the elaborate sentences, the imagery is often mystical or ironic, and the abundance of allusion extends to biblical scripture, myth, philosophy, literature, and the visual arts.

Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a merchant in French dry goods and his wife. His formal education ended abruptly after his father died in 1832, as this left the family in financial straits. He briefly became a schoolteacher before he took to sea in 1839 as a sailor on a merchant ship. In 1840, he signed aboard the whaler Acushnet for his first whaling voyage but jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. He returned to Boston in 1844 after further adventures.

In the 1840s and 1850s, the Berkshire town served as a cultural center for Boston-based writers and intellectuals, including Herman Melville, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Ward Beecher, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was also a magnet for an international coterie of progressive women reformers, among them Frances Ann (Fanny) Kemble, the British actress turned abolitionist; Harriet Martineau, the British writer on women’s rights; Fredrika Bremer, the Finnish feminist; and Anna Jameson, the British feminist and historian—all of whom engaged the young minds at the Elizabeth Sedgwick’s Lenox Academy, a progressive boarding school in the Berkshires for audacious girls.


Arrowhead

Melville's first book was Typee (1846), a highly romanticized account of his life among Polynesians. It became such a best-seller that he wrote the sequel Omoo (1847). These successes gave him the financial basis to marry Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of a prominent Boston family, but the success proved hard to sustain. His first novel that was not based on his own experiences was Mardi (1849), a sea narrative that develops into a philosophical allegory—but it was not well received. He received warmer reviews for Redburn (1849), a story of life on a merchant ship, and his 1850 description of the harsh life aboard a man-of-war in White-Jacket, but they did not provide financial security.

In August 1850, Melville moved his growing family to Arrowhead, a farm in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he established a profound but short-lived friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated Moby-Dick. This novel was another commercial failure, published to mixed reviews. Melville's career as a popular author effectively ended with the cool reception of Pierre (1852), in part a satirical portrait of the literary culture at the time. His Revolutionary War novel Israel Potter appeared in 1855.

From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, most notably "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853), "The Encantadas" (1854), and "Benito Cereno" (1855). These and three other stories were collected in 1856 as The Piazza Tales. In 1857, he traveled to England where he reunited with Hawthorne for the first time since 1852, and then toured the Near East. The Confidence-Man (1857) was the last prose work that he published. He moved to New York to take a position as Customs Inspector and turned to poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War.

In 1867, his oldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876, a metaphysical epic. In 1886, his son Stanwix died, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, left one volume unpublished, and returned to prose of the sea. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death but was published in 1924.

Melville's death from cardiovascular disease in 1891 subdued a reviving interest in his work. The 1919 centennial of his birth became the starting point of the "Melville Revival". Critics discovered his work, scholars explored his life; his major novels and stories have come to be considered world classics, and his poetry has gradually gained respect.

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