Herman Melville - Great American writer of novels, short stories and poetry.

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Herman Melville Great American writer of novels, short stories and poetry . He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great .

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Early years and Family Born Herman Melvill in New York City on August 1, 1819 at Allan Melvill and Maria Gansevoort Melvill’s , Herman was the third of eight children . He had three brothers and four sisters.Melville's father, Allan, spent a good deal of time abroad as a commission merchant and an importer of French expensive goods, specializing in what would now be called accessories. Melville's paternal grandfather, Major Thomas Melvill was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War. We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men. Herman’s father Allan Herman’s grandfather Thomas

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education Allan Melvill , who sent Herman to the New York Male High School, described Melville in 1826 as "very backwards in speech & somewhat slow in comprehension.“ F inancially and emotionally unstable , Allan Melville tried to recover from his setbacks by moving his family to Albany in 1830 and going into the fur business . F ather's new venture was unsuccessful; he was forced to declare bankruptcy and died soon afterward, when Herman was 12. He may have enrolled in order to prepare for his new career in school teaching which he embarked upon in Pittsfield in the fall of 1837.In 1838 he quit teaching and enrolled in the local academy at Lansingburgh , New York, where his mother now lived . Herman finished his education in 1839. Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone ?

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Years at sea A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard . In June 1839 Melville signed on the merchant ship St. Lawrence as a "boy "(a green hand) for a cruise from New York to Liverpool. He returned on the same ship on the first of October, after five weeks in England. His First Voyage (1849) was partly based on his experiences of this journey. On January 3, 1841, he sailed from Fairhaven, Massachusetts on the whaler Acushnet , which was bound for the Pacific Ocean. He was later to comment that his life began that day . Melville did not seem to be concerned about the consequences of leaving Acushnet . He boarded an Australian whale ship, the Lucy Ann , bound for Tahiti; took part in a mutiny and was briefly jailed in the native Calabooza Beretanee . After release, he spent several months as beachcomber and island rover (' omoo ' in Tahitian), eventually crossing over to Moorea. He wrote articles on another whaler for a six-month cruise (November 1842 − April 1843), which terminated in Honolulu. After working as a clerk for four months, he joined the crew of the frigate USS United States , which reached Boston in October 1844. He drew from these experiences in his books Typee , Omoo , and White-Jacket .

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Writing career Melville completed Typee in the summer of 1845, while living in Troy, New York. After some difficulty in arranging publication , he saw it first published in 1846 in London, where it became an overnight bestseller. The Boston publisher subsequently accepted Omoo sight unseen. Typee and Omoo gave Melville overnight renown as a writer and adventurer, and he often entertained by telling stories to his admirers. As the writer and editor, Nathaniel Parker Willis wrote, "With his cigar and his Spanish eyes, he talks Typee and Omoo , just as you find the flow of his delightful mind on paper ". These did not generate enough royalties to support him financially, however. Whatever fortune brings, don't be afraid of doing things.

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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. Writing career Mardi : And a Voyage Thither (1849) Redburn : His First Voyage (1849) White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War (1850) Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852) Isle of the Cross (1853 unpublished, and now lost) "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853) (short story) The Encantadas , or Enchanted Isles (1854) (novella, possibly incorporating a short rewrite of the lost Isle of the Cross[63]) "Benito Cereno " (1855) Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855) The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857) Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) (poetry collection) Clarel : A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876) (epic poem) John Marr and Other Sailors (1888) (poetry collection) Timoleon (1891) (poetry collection) Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) (1891 unfinished, published posthumously in 1924; authoritative edition in 1962)