Herman Melville

Bio

(1819-1891) Writer, novelist. Herman Melville was one of the great American writers and figures in world literature. Born in Manhattan, New York, at 6 Pearl Street, into an impoverished family, he later lived at 104 East 26th Street (or 103 4th Avenue). The house is gone, but there is a plaque on the 26th Street side of the building at 357 Park Avenue South. Melville left school at age 15 and spent his teenage years at sea. These adventures would eventually inform his novels “Typee” (1846), “Omoo” (1847), “Redburn” (1849), and Melville’s masterpiece “Moby-Dick” (1851). The first three novels were wildly successful romances, and Melville won regard as a literary figure in New York City circles. In 1850 Melville bought a farm near Pittsville, Massachusetts, where he lived next to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick,” and the work that followed it (“Pierre;” or, “The Ambiguities” (1852), “The Confidence Man” (1857), “The Piazza Tales” (1856)), was largely misunderstood and ill-received at the time of its publication. Meanwhile debts, poor health, and a diminishing audience took their collective toll on Melville, and he was forced to move back to New York City in 1866. He took a poorly paid job as a district inspector of customs, which he held for 19 years. Melville died in poverty and obscurity in New York City. In 1984 the United States Postal Service issued its fourth stamp in the Literary Arts series in honor of Herman Melville.