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Herman Melville : a biography / Hershel Parker.

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Traces Melville's life from his childhood in New York, through his adventures abroad as a sailor, to his creation of "Moby-Dick," and forty years later, to his death, in obscurity.

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Bibliographic Details
Online Access: Full Text (via Internet Archive)
Main Author: Parker, Hershel
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, ©1996-©2002.
Subjects:
Melville, Herman, > 1819-1891.
Novelists, American > 19th century > Biography.
Novelists, American.
Biography.
Table of Contents:
  • Volume 1:1819-1851
  • The flight of the patrician Wastrel and his second son: 1830
  • Herman Melvill's world, 1819-1830: Manhattan, Albany, Boston
  • "The terrors of death": Albany, 1831-1832
  • The "cholera year": 1832-1833
  • In the shadow of the young furrier: Herman as clerk, 1833-1835
  • Clerk, farmer, teacher, polemicist: 1836
  • May 1838
  • Herman in Lansingburgh: full-grown and useless, May 1838
  • May 1839
  • Sailor and schoolteacher: 1839-1840
  • West to seek his fortune: 1840
  • The first year of whaling: 1841
  • Whaler and runaway: 1842
  • Beachcomber and whaler: 1842-1843
  • Lahaina and Honolulu: 1843
  • Ordinary seaman on the United States: 1843-1844
  • Home but not home: October 1844
  • The sailor, the orator, and the grand contested election: 1844
  • Catching up: 1844
  • The sailor and the writing desk: 1844-1845
  • A manuscript but no publisher: 1845
  • A modern Crusoe: 1846
  • International author and the man of the family: 1846
  • The resurrection of Toby: 1846
  • Winning Elizabeth Shaw and winning the Harpers: 1846
  • Office-seeker and reviewer: 1847
  • Triumphant author, triumphant lover: 1847
  • Scandal and marriage: 1847
  • Newlyweds in New York City: 1847
  • Mardi as island-hopping symposium: 1847-1848
  • Dollars be damned: "the red year forty-eight"
  • Malcolm and the fate of Mardi: 1849
  • Redburn and White-jacket: summer 1849
  • London and a peek at continental life: fall 1849
  • The breaching of Mocha Dick: January 1850
  • Hiding out on the cannibal island: February
  • June 1850
  • Pittsfield and Hawthorne: June
  • 7 August 1850
  • Hawthorne and his Mosses: 8 August
  • September 1850
  • Writing at Arrowhead: October 1850
  • mid-January 1851
  • Damned by dollars: mid January
  • 1 May 1851
  • The final dash at The whale: May
  • September 1851
  • Melville in triumph: The whale and the kraken, September
  • November 1851
  • Volume 2: 1851-1891
  • Crowned and blindsided: November
  • December 1851
  • "Mad Christmas": December 1851
  • The kraken version of Pierre: November
  • December 1851
  • Melville crosses the Rubicon: January 1852
  • Riichard Bentley: The whale and Pierre, January
  • May 1852
  • Fool's paradise and the furies unleashed: June
  • September 1852
  • The isle of the cross: September 1852
  • June 1853
  • The magazinist: idealist turned would-be stoic, July 1853
  • January 1854
  • The shift away from Herman and Arrowhead: January
  • March 1854
  • Tortoises and Israel Potter: 1854
  • "Benito cereno": early 1855
  • The confidence man's masquerade: Melville as national satirist, June 1855
  • January 1856
  • Foreclosing on friendship: confession and shame, February
  • October 1856
  • Liverpool and the levant: late 1856
  • February 1857
  • Rome to Liverpool, and home: February
  • April 1857
  • "Statues in Rome": May 1857
  • February 1858
  • "The South Seas": March 1858
  • Spring 1859
  • The poet and the last lecture, "Travel": summer 1859
  • early 1960
  • An epic poet on the Metoer: May
  • October 1860
  • The dream of Florence, a state funeral, and war: November 1860
  • December 1861
  • A humble quest for an aesthetic credo: January
  • April 1862
  • Farewell to Arrowhead and the overthrow of Jehu: April
  • December 1862
  • Displacements: January
  • June 1863
  • Wartime second honeymoon and Manhattan: summer
  • fall 1863
  • The war poet's scout toward Aldie: 1864
  • Two years
  • of war and dubious peace: 1865-1866
  • Battle-pieces: poet, poems, reviewers, 1866
  • The deputy inspector amid domestic maelstroms: 1867
  • A snug harbor for the Melvilles: late 1867-1868
  • The man who had known Hawthorne: 1869
  • Wall Street, and "Jerusalem": 1870
  • The last mustering of the clan and "The wilderness": 1871
  • Death, Death, and flight to a snug harbor: 1872
  • A family in disarray, and "Mar Saba": 1873
  • The new generation, and "Bethlehem": 1874-1875
  • Clarel: Melville's centennial epic, 1876
  • "Old fogy" and imaginary companions: 1877-1879
  • The shadow at the feasts: 1880-1885
  • Fragments in a writing desk: 1886-1891
  • In and out of the house of the tragic poet: 1886-1891.

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