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基本説明
New in paperback. Hardcover was published in 1996. The first of a two-volume project constituting the fullest biography of Melville ever published.
Full Description
This is the first volume of a two-volume project which provides a biography of Melville. The author reveals the ups, downs and impasses of Melville's life, from his patrician birth in New York to the publication of "Moby Dick, or The Whale" in 1851. Born to an aristocratic father with a taste for luxury but no instinct for his business as an importer of French dry goods, Melville grew up taking his patrician condition for granted. But when only 11 years old, he helped his father hustle the family furniture out of town to save it from seizure by creditors. The fragility of wealth and status, and the gap between appearance and truth had become all too clear. After the death of Melville's father in 1832, the widow and eight children experienced humiliating dependency. Herman's older brother became the man of the family, and Herman passed his boyhood in confining office work broken by stretches of worried idleness and fruitless job hunting until he went to sea - first, briefly, in 1839, then to the Pacific as a whaleman in 1841.
When he returned home with a book to write, Herman, reenacting the familiar financial strains of his childhood, made a living from his writing no better than his father had done as a merchant. A scholar of Melville's life, works and milieu, Parker starts by pinpointing the facts of Melville's life. More important, he pulls those facts together, making sense of their manifold implications, and recreating the scenes, moods, attitudes and atmospheres through which Meville moved.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
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
The Sailor at 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 Face 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 1851Genealogical Charts
Documentation
Index
