Melville, Herman (1819–1891)

US writer. His novel Moby-Dick (1851) was inspired by his whaling experiences in the South Seas and is considered to be one of the masterpieces of American literature. Billy Budd, Sailor, completed just before his death and published in 1924, was the basis of an opera by Benjamin Britten (1951). Although most of his works were unappreciated during his lifetime, today he is one of the most highly regarded of US authors.

Melville's experiences as a sailor were also the basis for earlier fiction, such as the adventure narratives of Typee 1846 and Omoo 1847. He explored the dark, troubled side of American experience in novels of unusual form and great philosophical power. He was a friend of the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Life at sea Melville was born in Albany, New York State. His family was left destitute when his father became bankrupt and died when Melville was 12. He went to sea as a cabin boy 1839, and later used that experience as a basis for Redburn 1849. His next voyage in 1841 from Fairhaven to the Pacific in a whaler, the Acushnet, gave him much material for Moby-Dick. He deserted ship when it reached the Marquesas Islands, was captured by cannibals, and wrote about them in Typee, his first published work. Escaping in an Australian whaler, the Lucy Ann, he was put ashore at Tahiti as one of a mutinous crew and later made the Society Islands the subject of his second book, Omoo. Sailing from there to Honolulu, he went home as a sailor in the frigate United States, of which he wrote in White-Jacket 1850. He published a collection of short stories, The Piazza Tales 1856, and an unsuccessful satire, The Confidence Man 1857.

Later life and poetry Melville worked in the New York customs office 1866–85, and published several volumes of verse, including Battle Pieces 1866, and Clarel 1876. However, he did not produce any prose from 1857 until Billy Budd.