Chapter 2 - Herman Melville in the Doldrums

Summary

Herman Melville’s professional career took a strange turn in January 1852. Melville was visiting New York City from his home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to see his American publishers, Harper and Brothers, and to arrange publication of his new manuscript: his novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). Melville’s career to date had been mixed, to say the very least. His early novels of south sea adventure, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), had brought literary success and public notoriety. His third novel, Mardi (1849), had bemused critics with its departure from adventure narrative and its entry into an allegorical world of philosophical debate about the social order. Facing financial troubles, he quickly wrote two more novels that tapped his reputation for adventure at sea – Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850) – with the express purpose of making money. The mild success of these novels was followed by a final novel of sea adventure that morphed during composition into a philosophical treatise and an encyclopedia of whaling: Moby-Dick (1851). Though it met with appreciation here and there, and with some private and most gratifying praise from Melville’s friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, Moby-Dick had a hostile reception in the American press. The book sold poorly.