BIOGRAPHY

Herman Melville was born on August 1, 1819, the third of eight children. His father, Allan Melvill (the family changed the spelling of the last name around 1838) was of unsteady temperament but a prosperous importer and merchant in New York City. His mother, Maria Gansevoort, was a devoutly religious, somewhat critical woman from a colonial family of social standing in Albany.Herman had a troubled childhood. A bout with scarlet fever at the age of seven left his eyesight permanently damaged, and, following his father's death, the family was so poor that Herman's education was sporadic. Despite his weak eyes, Melville was an avid reader and delighted in finding, in his late twenties, an edition of Shakespeare with print large enough to accommodate him. But his real education was at sea. He could say, with Ishmael, "a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard."
At the age of thirty, Melville sought stability in a marriage (1847) to Elizabeth "Lizzie" Knapp Shaw, daughter of the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and a friend of his sister Helen. Relying on borrowed money from his wife's family, Melville purchased a farm (1850), which he called Arrowhead, in Massachusetts. Nearby lived Nathaniel Hawthorne, fifteen years Melville's senior, who published his most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter, that year; the two became friends.
Melville's writing career, much of which was inspired by his travels, began with the publication of Typee in 1846, followed relatively shortly after by Omoo (1847). The reaction to these first two novels was encouraging enough to make Melville believe, initially, that he had a future as a professional writer.
Melville left a few unpublished poems and, most notably, the fine novella Billy Budd, Foretopman, which was finally published in 1924. Although Melville was thought to be one of the finer young writers in America at the end of the 1840s, by his death he was nearly forgotten. Only one obituary noted his passing on September 28, 1891.