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Herman Melville's father was a New York City merchant who,
when he died suddenly, left his family heavily in debt. Melville
was only twelve at the time, but he was forced to leave school
to go to work. After a variety of jobs in his teens, Melville
joined a whaler sailing for the South Seas in 1841. On that
trip, Melville and a crewmate jumped ship and lived for several
weeks with a native tribe; upon his return to America, Melville
transformed that experience into Typee (1846), a
popular adventure tale that established him as a literary
celebrity. A sequel, Omoo, soon followed, but Melville's
appeal was dampened by his more philosophical works such as
Mardi (1849), Pierre (1853), and even Moby-Dick
(1851). Critics of these novels declared Melville unbalanced,
and Melville had to struggle to regain the economic and critical
popularity he had enjoyed with his earlier writing. After
Pierre, he primarily wrote short stories for magazines
like Harper's. Financial concerns burdened the family
for years, but an inheritance late in life allowed Melville
to work on his final masterpiece, Billy Budd, Sailor.
Only after his death did Melville rise from the ranks of second-rate
adventure novelists to his present status as one of the most
important American writers.
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