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Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener"

BIOGRAPHY

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[From The Norton Introduction to Literature]

(1819–1891)

When his father died in debt, twelve-year-old Herman Melville's life of privilege became one of struggle.At eighteen, he left his native New York to teach in a backwoods Massachusetts school, then trained as a surveyor; finding no work, he became a sailor in 1839. After five years in the South Seas, he wrote Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), sensationalized accounts of his voyages that were wildly popular.They proved the pinnacle of Melville's career in his lifetime, however; Mardi (1849) was judged too abstruse, the travel narratives Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), too listless. Melville's magnum opus, Moby-Dick (1851), was alternately shunned and condemned.His later novels—Pierre (1852), Israel Potter (1853), and The Confidence-Man (1856)—as well as his poetry collection Battle-Pieces (1866) were all but ignored. Melville's reputation as one of the giants of American literature was established only after his death; the novel Billy Budd, Sailor (not published until 1924), like Moby-Dick, was judged a masterpiece.

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