caption death_date death_place children birth_place birth_date spouse signature image article_title name
herman oriel eaton . melville , 1870 . oil painting by joseph 28 september 1891 new york city , new york , u.s. malcolm -lrb- 1849 -- 1867 -rrb- new york city , new york , u.s. 1 august 1819 elizabeth -rrb- 1847 1891 -lrb- his death -rrb- knapp shaw -lrb- b. 1822 - d. 1906 herman melville signature.svg herman melville.jpg herman melville
 herman melville
herman melville

herman melville -lrb- august 1 , 1819 -- september 28 , 1891 -rrb- was an american novelist , writer of short stories , and poet from the american renaissance period .
most of his writings were published between 1846 and 1857 .
best known for his sea adventure `` typee '' -lrb- 1846 -rrb- and his whaling novel `` moby-dick '' -lrb- 1851 -rrb- , he was almost forgotten during the last thirty years of his life .
melville 's writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor , exploration of literature and philosophy , and engagement in the contradictions of american society in a period of rapid change .
the main characteristic of his style is probably its heavy allusiveness , a reflection of his use of written sources .
melville 's way of adapting what he read for his own new purposes , scholar stanley t. williams wrote , `` was a transforming power comparable to shakespeare 's '' .
born in new york city as the third child of a merchant in french dry-goods , melville 's formal education stopped abruptly after the death of his father in 1832 , shortly after bankruptcy left the family in financial straits .
melville briefly became a schoolteacher before he took to sea in 1839 .
this voyage to liverpool as a common sailor on a merchant ship became the basis for his fourth book , `` redburn '' -lrb- 1849 -rrb- .
in late december 1840 he signed up aboard the `` acushnet '' for his first whaling voyage , but jumped ship eighteen months later in the marquesas islands .
his first book , `` typee '' -lrb- 1846 -rrb- , a fictionalized account of his life among the natives there , became such a success that he worked up a sequel , `` omoo '' -lrb- 1847 -rrb- .
the same year melville married elizabeth knapp shaw ; their four children were born between 1849 and 1855 .
in august 1850 , melville moved his family to a farm near pittsfield , massachusetts , where he established a profound but short-lived friendship with nathaniel hawthorne .
`` moby-dick '' was published in 1851 to mixed reviews , but proved a commercial failure .
less than a year later , melville 's career as a popular author effectively ended with the cool reception of ' .
the next years he turned to writing short fiction for magazines , such as `` bartleby , the scrivener '' and `` benito cereno . ''
after the serialized novel `` israel potter '' was published as a book in 1855 , the short stories were collected in 1856 as `` the piazza tales '' .
in 1857 , melville voyaged to england and the near east ; twenty years later , he worked his experience in egypt and palestine into an epic poem , ' -lrb- 1876 -rrb- .
in 1857 `` the confidence-man '' appeared , his last prose work published during his lifetime .
having secured a position as customs inspector , he moved to new york .
he now turned to poetry , the first example of which is his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the civil war , `` battle-pieces and aspects of the war '' -lrb- 1866 -rrb- .
in 1867 his oldest child , malcolm , died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot .
in 1886 melville retired as customs inspector and privately published two volumes of poetry .
during the last years of his life , he returned to prose once again and worked on `` billy budd , sailor '' , left unfinished at his death , and eventually published in 1924 .
his death in 1891 from cardiovascular disease subdued the reviving interest in him , but the centennial of his birth marked the starting point of the `` melville revival , '' and melville 's rise to the eventual appreciation of his writings as world classics .
