page_title: Herman Melville
section_title: 1845–1850: Successful writer
hierarchical_section_title: Herman Melville / Biography / 1845–1850: Successful writer
caption_attribution_description: English: View from the northeast of Arrowhead, the residence of writer Herman Melville, at 780 Holmes Road, Pittsfield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
context_page_description: Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick, Typee, a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia, and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his reputation was not high at the time of his death, the centennial of his birth in 1919 was the starting point of a Melville revival and Moby-Dick grew to be considered one of the great American novels.
  Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo, were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the island. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of a prominent Boston family. Mardi, a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received.
context_section_description: Upon his return, Melville regaled his family and friends with his adventurous tales and romantic experiences, and they urged him to put them into writing. Melville completed Typee, his first book, in the summer of 1845 while living in Troy, New York. His brother Gansevoort found a publisher for it in London, where it was published in February 1846 by John Murray in his travel adventure series. It became an overnight bestseller in England, then in New York, when it was published on March 17 by Wiley & Putnam.
  Melville extended the period his narrator spent on the island by three months, made it appear he understood the native language, and incorporated material from source books he had assembled. Milder calls Typee "an appealing mixture of adventure, anecdote, ethnography, and social criticism presented with a genial latitudinarianism that gave novelty to a South Sea idyll at once erotically suggestive and romantically chaste".
  
  An unsigned review in the Salem Advertiser written by Nathaniel Hawthorne called the book a "skilfully managed" narrative by an author with "that freedom of view ... which renders him tolerant of codes of morals that may be little in accordance with our own". Hawthorne continued: 
  This book is lightly but vigorously written; and we are acquainted with no work that gives a freer and more effective picture of barbarian life, in that unadulterated state of which there are now so few specimens remaining. The gentleness of disposition that seems akin to the delicious climate, is shown in contrast with the traits of savage fierceness...He has that freedom of view—it would be too harsh to call it laxity of principle—which renders him tolerant of codes of morals that may be little in accordance with our own, a spirit proper enough to a young and adventurous sailor, and which makes his book the more wholesome to our staid landsmen. 
   
  Pleased but not overwhelmed by the adulation of his new public, Melville later expressed concern that he would "go down to posterity ... as a 'man who lived among the cannibals'!" The writing of Typee brought Melville back into contact with his friend Greene—Toby in the book—who wrote confirming Melville's account in newspapers. The two corresponded until 1863, and in his final years Melville "traced and successfully located his old friend" for a further meeting of the two friends. In March 1847, Omoo, a sequel to Typee was published by Murray in London, and in May by Harper in New York. Omoo is "a slighter but more professional book," according to Milder. 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". In 1847 Melville tried unsuccessfully to find a "government job" in Washington.
  In June 1847, Melville and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Knapp Shaw were engaged, after knowing each other for approximately three months. Melville had first asked her father, Lemuel Shaw, for her hand in March, but was turned down at the time. Shaw, Chief Justice of Massachusetts, had been a close friend of Melville's father, and his marriage with Melville's aunt Nancy was prevented only by her death. His warmth and financial support for the family continued after Allan's death. Melville dedicated his first book, Typee, to him.  Lizzie was raised by her grandmother and an Irish nurse. Arvin suggests that Melville's interest in Lizzie may have been stimulated by "his need of Judge Shaw's paternal presence". They were married on August 4, 1847. Lizzie described their marriage as "very unexpected, and scarcely thought of until about two months before it actually took place". She wanted to be married in church, but they had a private wedding ceremony at home to avoid possible crowds hoping to see the celebrity. The couple honeymooned in the then-British Province of Canada, and traveled to Montreal. They settled in a house on Fourth Avenue in New York 
caption: Herman Melville's home Arrowhead, Pittsfield, Massachusetts
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "1024", "Image ImageLength": "823", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "4", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:12:29 19:20:49", "Image ExifOffset": "232", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "11620", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "936", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "720"}