60 Fun Facts About Herman Melville

Where was Herman Melville born on August 1, 1819?

He was the third of eight children of importer Allan Melvill; the family added the 'e' later.

Melville's paternal grandfather, Major Thomas Melvill, took part in which famous event?

His maternal grandfather, General Peter Gansevoort, defended Fort Stanwix in 1777, giving Melville a 'double revolutionary descent'.

What language did the Gansevoort side of Melville's family speak at home?

His mother's severe Dutch Reformed Calvinism became a decisive influence after his father's death.

Melville's father Allan died in January 1832 after what?

He fell into delirium; twenty years later Melville described a similar death in Pierre.

After his father's death, young Melville worked as a clerk at what kind of institution?

His uncle Peter Gansevoort got him the $150-a-year job at the New York State Bank; he was later pulled out to run the family fur store.

Under what initials did Melville publish his first known essay, 'Fragments from a Writing Desk', in 1839?

It appeared in two installments in the Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser.

On which merchant ship did Melville first go to sea in 1839, sailing to Liverpool?

The voyage became the basis of Redburn: His First Voyage.

Which new whaler, 104 feet long, did Melville sign aboard on Christmas Day 1840 at New Bedford?

He signed as a green hand for 1/175th of the profits and sailed on January 3, 1841.

Which book by Richard Henry Dana Jr. helped inspire Melville to go whaling?

He was also inspired by Reynolds's Knickerbocker account of the white whale Mocha Dick.

Mocha Dick, the white whale that inspired Moby-Dick, was usually found off which country?

By Reynolds's account the albino sperm whale survived at least 100 skirmishes with whalers before it was killed.

At sea in 1841, Melville met the son of which whaleship Essex survivor, who gave him his father's account?

Melville later wrote that reading it 'upon the landless sea, & close to the very latitude of the shipwreck had a surprising effect upon me'.

What sank the Nantucket whaleship Essex in 1820?

The survivors resorted to cannibalism; the story fed directly into Moby-Dick.

Where did Melville and his shipmate Toby jump ship in the summer of 1842?

His stay in or near the Taipi Valley became Typee.

In Tahiti, Melville took part in a mutiny and was briefly jailed in what?

He escaped to Eimeo and spent a month as a beachcomber, an 'omoo' in Tahitian.

What does the Tahitian word 'omoo' mean?

Melville spent a month living that way before crossing to Moorea.

Melville came home in 1844 as an ordinary seaman aboard which US Navy frigate?

He joined in Hawaii in August 1843; the experience became White-Jacket.

Melville's first book Typee was first published in 1846 in which city?

His brother Gansevoort found John Murray, who put it in his travel adventure series; Wiley & Putnam followed in New York.

Typee made Melville notorious as 'the man who lived among the' what?

He later worried that this was how he would go down to posterity.

Which future famous author wrote an unsigned review of Typee in the Salem Advertiser?

He praised its 'freedom of view' about morals; the two men would meet in 1850.

Melville married Elizabeth Shaw in 1847. What was her father Lemuel's position?

Shaw had been a close friend of Melville's father, and Melville dedicated Typee to him.

Why did the Melvilles hold a private wedding at home in 1847 rather than in church?

They honeymooned in Canada and settled on Fourth Avenue, now Park Avenue.

Which 1849 novel was Melville's first not based on his own experiences, and was not well received?

It began as a South Sea story and turned into an allegorical voyage through an imaginary archipelago.

What did Melville name the 160-acre Pittsfield farm he bought in 1850?

Arrowheads were dug up around the property at planting time; he wrote Moby-Dick and Pierre there.

Near which town did Melville and Hawthorne first talk deeply while sheltering from rain at a picnic in August 1850?

Melville then devoured Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse and wrote the essay 'Hawthorne and His Mosses'.

To whom did Melville dedicate Moby-Dick 'in token of my admiration for his genius'?

Hawthorne told Duyckinck, 'What a book Melville has written!'

Under what title was Moby-Dick first published in Britain in October 1851?

The three-volume London edition appeared on October 18; the single-volume American Moby-Dick followed on November 14.

Which writer's Sartor Resartus and On Heroes did Melville borrow in summer 1850 as he transformed Moby-Dick?

Delbanco called the result 'the most ambitious book ever conceived by an American writer'.

The New York Day Book's venomous 1852 attack on Pierre ran under what headline?

It claimed his friends were 'taking measures to place him under treatment'.

What was the fate of Melville's 1853 manuscript 'Isle of the Cross', based on the Agatha story?

Harper & Brothers was 'prevented' from publishing it, Melville later wrote.

What is the famous refrain of the clerk in 'Bartleby, the Scrivener'?

The story was serialized anonymously in Putnam's in 1853; Robert Milder calls it 'unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction'.

What is the subtitle of 'Bartleby, the Scrivener'?

The narrator is an unnamed elderly lawyer with a Wall Street office.

'Benito Cereno' fictionalizes a revolt aboard what kind of vessel?

Captain Amasa Delano of the Bachelor's Delight boards the San Dominick off Chile in 1799 and misreads everything he sees.

Melville's 1856 collection The Piazza Tales was named after what?

The new introductory story 'The Piazza' joined five reprinted tales including 'Bartleby' and 'Benito Cereno'.

Melville dedicated his novel Pierre to what?

The mountain overlooked his farm at Arrowhead.

Melville's last full-length novel, The Confidence-Man, is set aboard a steamboat on which river?

Subtitled His Masquerade, it was published on April 1, 1857, and baffled reviewers.

On what date was The Confidence-Man published in 1857?

It was his last full-length novel and its April Fools' Day release suited its theme of masquerade.

In November 1856 Melville reunited for three days with Hawthorne, who was then serving as what?

Walking the sand dunes at Southport, Melville said he had 'pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated'.

Melville's lyceum lectures of 1857-1860 dealt chiefly with what subject?

They mocked lyceum culture's pseudo-intellectualism and were panned.

In 1860 Melville sailed for California around Cape Horn on the clipper Meteor, captained by whom?

After a shaky trip he came home alone via Panama.

Melville's 1866 poetry collection about the Civil War was titled what?

Of 1,260 copies printed, only 551 sold; he had visited the Virginia battlefields in 1864.

What job did Melville hold in New York City for 19 years from 1866?

He was known for honesty in a notoriously corrupt institution, and future president Chester A. Arthur quietly protected his post.

Which future US president, then a customs official, secretly protected the novelist's job?

Arthur admired Melville's writing but never spoke to him.

How did Melville's eldest son Malcolm die in 1867 at age 18?

Whether intentional or accidental is unknown; his other son Stanwix died of tuberculosis in 1886.

Melville's 18,000-line epic poem Clarel (1876) is set in which place?

Publication of 350 copies was funded by an uncle's bequest; unsold copies were burned.

Which character in Clarel is loosely based on Hawthorne?

Rolfe resembles Melville himself as a young seeker; Hawthorne had died twelve years earlier.

Melville's last two poetry collections, John Marr and Timoleon, were each printed in how many copies?

They were intended only for relatives and friends.

Where was Melville buried after his death in September 1891?

His death certificate gave 'cardiac dilation' as the cause.

How did The New York Times misspell Melville's masterpiece in its initial death notice?

The error was later wrongly taken as proof he was unappreciated, though the Times ran a substantial appreciation days later.

Where were the manuscript pages of Billy Budd stored until 1919?

Melville's granddaughter gave them to Raymond Weaver, who published a hasty transcription in 1924.

Aboard which Royal Navy warship is Billy Budd impressed into service in 1797?

He strikes and kills the master-at-arms John Claggart, and Captain Vere has him hanged.

Who is the master-at-arms whom Billy Budd strikes and kills?

Captain Vere recognizes Billy's lack of intent but says the law of mutiny requires the hanging.

Which centennial year is regarded as the starting point of the Melville revival?

Carl Van Doren's 1917 article and Raymond Weaver's 1921 biography Mariner and Mystic helped light the fire.

Whose 1929 biography, with the 1923 Studies in Classic American Literature, fanned the Melville revival?

Mumford found an unread copy of Clarel in the New York Public Library in 1925 'with its pages uncut'.

Newton Arvin's critical biography of Melville won which prize in 1951?

Charles Olson's Call Me Ishmael (1947) had presented Ahab as a Shakespearean tragic hero.

In 2010 what creature was given the species name melvillei in the author's honor?

The paleontologists who found the fossil were fans of Moby-Dick.

The 1984 US postage stamp honoring Melville had its first day of issue at what location?

It was a 20-cent stamp in the Literary Arts Series.

The corner of Park Avenue South and 26th Street, his home from 1863 to 1891, is dedicated as what?

He lived at 104 East 26th Street from 1863 to 1891 and wrote Billy Budd there.

What is the famous opening sentence of Moby-Dick?

The book has been called one of the Great American Novels, though it found no audience in Melville's lifetime.

Ishmael's tattooed harpooneer bedmate in Moby-Dick is a king's son from which invented island?

Queequeg joins the Pequod's crew despite Elijah's dire prophecy.

Melville's serialized 1853 novel Israel Potter is a narrative about a veteran of which war?

After Pierre flopped he could not find a book publisher, so it ran in Putnam's Monthly Magazine.