Melville's most significant works outside of Moby Dick include the short stories that he wrote during this time period, including "Bartleby the Scrivener" (1853) and "Benito Cereno" (1855). He followed this with Pierre (1852), a novel that drew from Melville's experiences as a youth, and the modest success Israel Potter (1855). Although now heralded as a landmark work in American literature, the novel received little acclaim upon its release. The relationship with Hawthorne reawakened Melville's creative energies, and in 1851 Melville published his most renowned novel, Moby Dick. In the summer of 1850, under the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville bought the Arrowhead farm near Pittsfield so that he could live near Hawthorne, and the two men, who shared similar philosophies, became close. The successes Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850) returned to the style that had made Melville famous, but neither work expanded the author's reputation. The novel was another Polynesian adventure, but its fantastical elements and jarring juxtaposition of styles made it a critical and commercial disappointment. In August 1847 Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of the Chief Justice of Massachusetts, and began a new book, Mardi, which would be published in 1849. Melville could now support himself solely by writing, and his first two novels were notorious successes. legation in London under the Polk Administration. By the time Melville reached America once more, his family's fortunes had dramatically improved: his brother Gansevoort had become the secretary for U.S. Melville took his final whaling voyage as a harpooner on the Charles & Henry, but left the voyage while on the Hawaiian Islands and returned to America as a sailor on the United States, reaching Boston in 1844. Melville's second novel, Omoo (1847) details the adventures of another whaling journey in which Melville took part in a mutiny and landed in a Tahitian jail, from which he later easily escaped. This novel is the reputed story of his life among the cannibalistic Typee people for several months in 1842, but is likely a highly fictionalized dramatization of the actual events. By June of the following year the Acushnet landed in the Polynesian Islands, and Melville's adventures in this area became the basis for his first novel, Typee (1846). In January of 1841 Melville undertook a second voyage on the whaler Acushnet from New Bedford to the South Seas. By this time, Melville had already started writing. Herman Melville worked as a bank clerk before attending the Albany Classical School, and then worked for a short time as a teacher in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.Īlthough he studied surveying at Landingsburgh Academy in order to take part in the Erie Canal Project, he did not gain a post with the project and instead shipped out of America as a cabin boy on the St. As a child, Herman suffered from extremely poor eyesight caused by a bout of scarlet fever, but he was able to attend Male High School despite his difficulties. Melville's father was involved in the felt and fur import business, yet in 1830 his business collapsed and the Melvill family moved from New York City to Albany, where Allan Melvill died two years later. Stanwix against the British during the revolution. His paternal grandfather, Major Thomas Melvill, was a member of the Boston Tea Party, and his maternal grandfather, General Peter Gansevoort, was renowned for leading the defense of Ft. His ancestors included several Scottish and Dutch settlers of New York, as well as a number of prominent leaders in the American Revolution. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, _that_ is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report which will appear in the sequel.Herman Melville was born on the first of August in 1819 in New York City, the third of eight children of Allan and Maria Gansevoort Melvill. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small.
#MELVILLE BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER FULL#
I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. While of other lawcopyists I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or heard of. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which goodnatured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:I mean the lawcopyists or scriveners.