Herman Melville

Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. His father's import business failed and he died when Herman was twelve, leaving the family in debt. Melville worked as a bank clerk, teacher and farmhand, and in 1839 he sailed on a merchant ship to Liverpool. In 1841 he joined the crew of the whaling ship Acushnet, bound for the Pacific. He deserted in the Marquesas Islands, lived for a time among the Taipi people, and later served on other ships, including a United States Navy frigate. His novels based on these adventures, Typee (1846) and Omoo, were popular. While living on a farm in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he became friends with Nathaniel Hawthorne, he wrote Moby-Dick (1851), the story of Captain Ahab's obsessive hunt for a white whale, narrated by the sailor Ishmael. It sold poorly, and his later books, including Bartleby, the Scrivener, were also little noticed. For nineteen years he worked as a customs inspector in New York. He died there in 1891, leaving Billy Budd unfinished; it was published in 1924.

Herman Melville is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Raised in a home shaped by his mother's strict Dutch Reformed (Calvinist) faith; his own later beliefs were questioning and are debated. Source: Wikipedia