Herman Melville
A Half Known Life. 2 Volume Set
1. Edition December 2020
1392 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Further versions
A comprehensive exploration of Melville's formative years, providing a new biographical foundation for today's generations of Melville readers
Herman Melville: A Half Known Life, Volumes 1 and 2, follows Herman Melville's life from early childhood to his astonishing emergence as a bestselling novelist with the publication of Typee in 1846. These volumes comprise the first half of a comprehensive biography on Melville, grounded in archival research, new scholarship, and incisive critical readings. Author John Bryant, a distinguished Melville scholar, editor, critic, and educator, traces the events and experiences that shaped the many-stranded consciousness of one of literature's greatest writers. This in-depth and innovative biography covers Melville's family history and literary friendships, his father-longing, god-hunger, and search for the hidden nature of Being, the genesis of his liberal politics, his empathy for African Americans, Native Americans, Polynesians, South Americans, and immigrants.
Original perspectives on Melville's earliest identities--orphaned son, sibling, farmer, teacher, debater, lover, actor, sailor--provide the context for Melville's evolution as a writer. The biography presents new information regarding Melville's reading, his early orations and acting experience, his life at sea and on the road, and the unsettling death of his older, rival brother from mercury poisoning. It provides insights on experiences such as Melville's trauma at the loss of his father, his learning to write amidst a coterie siblings, his struggles to find work during economic depression, his journey West, his life in whaling and in the navy, and his vagabondage in the South Pacific during the moment of American and European imperial incursions. A significant addition to Melville scholarship, this important biographical work:
* Explores the nature and development of Melville's creative consciousness, through the lens of his revisions in manuscript and print
* Assesses Melville's sexual growth and exploration of the spectrum of his masculinities
* Highlights Melville's relevance in contemporary democratic society
* Discusses Melville's blending of dark humor and tragedy in his unique version of the picturesque
* Examines the 'replaying' of Melville's life traumas throughout his entire works, from Typee, Omoo, Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick, Pierre, Israel Potter, and The Confidence-Man to his shorter works, including "Bartleby," his epic Clarel, his poetry, and his last novella Billy Budd
* Covers such cultural and historical events as the American revolution of his grandparents, the whaling industry, New York slavery, street life and theater in Manhattan, the transatlantic slave trade, the Jacksonian economy, Indian removal, Pacific colonialism, and westward expansion
Written in an engaging style for scholars and general readers alike, Herman Melville: A Half Known Life, Volumes 1 and 2 is an indispensable new source of information and insights for those interested in Melville, 19th-century and modern literature and culture, and readers of general American history and literary culture.
Introduction 5347
1 Manhattan and Albany (1819-1832) 0
Chap 1 Last Leaves, New Leaf 5085
Chap 2 Commerce and Providence 3248
Chap 3 Home and Street 6921
Chap 4 Awakenings 6487
Chap 5 The Secret of Our Paternity 7042
Chap 6 Marriage of New England and New York 2647
Chap 7 Recuperations 2588
Chap 8 School Boy and Reader 4694
Chap 9 The Birth of Ishmael 3166
2 Growing up Gansevoort (1832-1836) 0
Chap 10 Patriarch and Hero 4153
Chap 11 Gansevoort and the Indians 3373
Chap 12 Broken Temple 4576
Chap 13 Jackson and the Negro 2706
Chap 14 Albany and Africa 4625
Chap 15 Black Gansevoort 3092
Chap 16 Mourning and Arousal 4922
Chap 17 Summer of Plague 5104
Chap 18 Spoils and Debt 1811
Chap 19 Working Boy: Steam & Temptation 4525
Chap 20 Moving Up 3433
3 Sibling Coterie (1836) 0
Chap 21 Brother Gansevoort 6562
Chap 22 Happiness and Power 4568
Chap 23 Sister Helen 4116
*Chap 24 Emancipated School Girl 7423
Chap 25 Sister Augusta 6307
Chap 26 Dark-eyed Darling 5368
Chap 27 Composing Yourself 4830
4 Inland Identities:
Farmer, Teacher, Debater, Lover, Writer (1836-1839) 0
*Chap 28 "Deep Inland There I" 4327
Chap 29 Uncle Thomas 5732
Chap 30 Schoolmaster 6065
Chap 31 Debater and Cosmopolite 8335
Chap 32 Lansingburgh: River Banks & Bankruptcy 2911
Chap 33 The Intimacy of Reading 6206
Chap 34 Occasional Writting & Reading 5813
*Chap 35 Love is then our Duty 6862
Chap 36 Published Writer 4784
5 The Imperative of Travel (1839) 0
Chap 37 On the Go Off 4607
Chap 38 Circumambulating Manhattan 3617
Chap 39 Heading Out to Sea 2892
Chap 40 Brotherhood of Outcasts 4860
Chap 41 Secret Sympathy 3448
6 First Voyage (1839) 0
Chap 42 Along the Marge 1941
Chap 43 His First Crew 3472
Chap 44 Learning the Ropes 4414
Chap 45 No School Like a Ship
for Studying Human Nature 4512
Chap 46 Irish Sea and Liverpool 5461
7 Liverpool and Back (1839-1840) 0
Chap 47 The Liverpool of His Father 5458
Chap 48 Roscoe and the Picture of Liverpool 6584
Chap 49 What Melville Saw in Liverpool 4035
Chap 50 The Moment of Liverpool 4460
Chap 51 Home Again: Teacher Again 5005
Chap 52 Rent 5153
Chap 53 Maria's Boys 7029
Volume 2 Melville at Sea (1840-1846)
8 Out West (1840) 0
Chap 54 On the Road 3253
Chap 55 On the Canal 3653
Chap 56 Up in Michigan 2303
Chap 57 Chicago and Galena 2670
Chap 58 Versions of Prairie 2731
Chap 59 The Falls of St. Anthony 1464
Chap 60 Lonely Watcher 3168
Chap 61 Rivers and Scars 6134
9 The Atlantic (1841) 0
Chap 62 Four Weeks' Residence in Manhattan 4139
Chap 63 Mean Streets 5723
Chap 64 New Bedford 4669
Chap 65 Ready for Sea 3842
Chap 66 Ship and Space 6203
Chap 67 First Lowering 6155
Chap 68 Unimaginable Accidents 4642
Chap 69 Tornadoed Atlantic of My Being 5235
10 The Pacific (1841-1842) 0
Chap 70 My Dear Pacific 4568
Chap 71 Work and Love 5237
Chap 72 This Thing of the Essex 6500
Chap 73 Forecastle Conversation 6267
Chap 74 Lover of the Picturesque 3791
Chap 75 Versions of Picturesque 2772
11 The Marquesas (1842) 0
Chap 76 Nuku Hiva 5488
Chap 77 Jumping Ship 6280
Chap 78 Island Masculinities 5918
Chap 79 Taipi and Typee 6187
Chap 80 Escaping Paradise 6413
12 Tahiti, Eimeo, Hawai'i (1842-1843) 0
Chap 81 Good and Faithful Seaman 4839
Chap 82 Reluctant Mutineer 4490
Chap 83 Resistance and Vulnerability 4323
Chap 84 Comic Consciousness 5039
Chap 85 Tahiti As Is 5916
Chap 86 Cosmopolitan Polynesia 4629
Chap 87 Not Until Honolulu Was I Aware 5633
Chap 88 Colonial Consciousness 4412
13 In the Navy (1843-1844) 0
Chap 89 Herman Melville O. S. 6074
Chap 90 Ordinary Seamen 5030
Chap 91 Miracle of Art 4840
Chap 92 Tearless in Lima 3259
Chap 93 Humiliation and Riot 5137
Chap 94 Theater of War 4752
14 Sailor Come Home (1844-1845) 0
Chap 95 Beloved Brother 8027
Chap 96 Tableaux Vivants 7189
Chap 97 First Unfoldings 5811
15 Writing Typee (1845-1846) 0
Chap 98 Tinker, Alter, Erupt 4982
Chap 99 The Language of My Companion 6225
Chap 100 Translating Taipi 5358
Chap 101 Melville in Eruption 5192
Chap 102 Smuggling Verbalist 4450
16 Practiced Writer (1846) 0
Chap 103 Brothers Together 7857
Chap 104 Broken Sword 4900
Total 253761
vol. 1 256702
vol. 2 253761
