Herman Melville
American
Lineage
- Mother Maria Gansevoort Melvill
| Y/M/D | Description | Association | Composition | Place | Locale | Food | Event |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Y/M/D | Description | Association | Composition | Place | Locale | Food | Event |
| 1819/08/01 | Maria Gansevoort Melvill, wife of Allan Melvill, gives birth to a son, Herman Melville, in New York City. | Born | |||||
| 1833/07/00 | Herman Melville stays with his uncle Thomas at his farm in Pittsfield. | Life | Pittsfield Country Club | Pittsfield, MA | |||
| 1838/11/07 | Herman Melville moves to the family home in Lansingburgh, very pleasantly situated on the bank of the Hudson where the shipbuilding yard of Richard Hanford builds Hudson River sloops. | Home | Herman Melville House, Troy | Troy | |||
| 1838/11/12 | In hope of securing a job on the Erie Canal, Herman Melville enrolls, for $5.25 a term, in an engineering surveying program at the Lansingburgh Academy. | Education | Lansingburgh Academy | Troy | |||
| 1839/05/18 | "Fragments From a Writing Desk" by H Melville are published on the front pages of the May 4 and 18 May 18 1839, issues of The Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser. The original newspapers are in the Troy Public Library's collection. | Author | Troy Public Library | Troy | |||
| 1839/06/00 | Herman Melville joins a Liverpool trader, returning to the United States the following October. He will write about his experiences on this voyage in his partly autobiographical novel Redburn, His First Voyage (1849). | Work | |||||
| 1841/01/03 | Melville takes to the sea on the whaler ACUSHNET out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Melville signs up with captain Valentine Pease for a journey of four years. | Work | Moby Dick (book) | New Bedford | Massachusetts | ||
| 1842/00/00 | Melville ships-out aboard the whaler CHARLES AND HENRY, which takes a southern Pacific route like the one described in his third book, Mardi (1849). | Work | |||||
| 1842/07/00 | Herman Melville jumps ship at Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands. Melville and Richard Greene make their way to the interior of the island where they are captured by Taipis tribe. | Visitor | Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life | Nuku Hiva | French Polynesia | ||
| 1842/08/09 | Melville works on the Australian whaler LUCY ANN until 20 September 1842. He will be briefly imprisonment at Tahiti for refusing to return to the ship. | Work | New Bedford | Massachusetts | |||
| 1843/00/00 | "Doctor" Long Ghost and Melville visit the island of Eimeo. Melville will write about this trip in his second book "Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas". | Life | Moorea | French Polynesia | |||
| 1843/05/00 | From May to August, Melville sojourns on the Sandwich Islands, staying at Lahaina, on Maui, and at Honolulu. | Visitor | Lahaina | Hawaii | |||
| 1843/08/17 | Melville sails as an ordinary seaman on the frigate UNITED STATES. He use the coming series of adventures and those of other sailors, in "White-Jacket" (1850). | Work | |||||
| 1844/10/14 | After being discharged at Boston, Herman Melville returns to his mother's home. | Home | Herman Melville House, Troy | Troy | |||
| 1845/02/00 | By wintertime, Herman Melville begins writing "Typee" at a large wooden desk his mother helped him drag out of the attic and set near an upstairs window overlooking the Hudson. | Home | Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life | Herman Melville House, Troy | Troy | ||
| 1846/00/00 | With the success of Typee, Herman Melville begins writing "Qmoo". He will later write parts of "Redburn" here. | Author | Herman Melville House, Troy | Troy | |||
| 1846/02/26 | "Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life" by Herman Melville is published in London by John Murray. Many reviewers will be pleased with the novelty of Typee and its straightforward style. | Author | Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life | ||||
| 1847/03/00 | Early in 1847 Melville begins "Mardi" as a sequel to Omoo. By the end of the year he had resolved to make it political and moral allegory expressing his ideas about contemporary western civilization and the nature of literature, religion and philosophy. | Author | |||||
| 1847/08/04 | Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of Massachusetts, marries Herman Melville. The young couple will settle in 4th Avenue (Park Ave) in New York City. | Groom | |||||
| 1848/00/00 | In New York City, Herman Melville joins up with the Duyckinck brothers, George and Evert, whose literary circle is the most interesting and influential in the city. | Life | |||||
| 1849/12/00 | Herman Melville visits the Hotel de Cluny, Paris. "just the house I should like to live in." HM | Visitor | Moby Dick (book) | Hotel de Cluny and Palais des Thermes | Paris | ||
| 1850/07/00 | In the summer, Melville leaves New York City to visit his uncle Thomas Melville at his farm. | Guest | Pittsfield Country Club | Pittsfield, MA | |||
| 1850/08/05 | At the summit of Monument Mountain, Herman Melville jumps onto a sharp rock resembling a ship's bowsprit overlooking the valley below and reels in imaginary rigging. | Guest | Monument Mountain | Great Barrington, MA | Evert Duyckinck's Monument Picnic | ||
| 1850/09/00 | Herman Melville reads "Mosses From an Old Manse" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. | Life | Mosses from an Old Manse (short story collection) | ||||
| 1850/09/14 | With the help of his father-in-law, Melville buys a late C18 farmhouse with some 145 acres of land near Pittsfield from Dr John Brewster. Meville will name it "Arrowhead" after finding several Indian relics. | Home | Herman Melville House, Pittsfield | Pittsfield, MA | |||
| 1851/06/00 | By the end of the month, wearied with the long delay of printers and clearly under Hawthorne's influence, Herman Melville completes "Moby Dick". | Author | Moby Dick (book) | Herman Melville House, Pittsfield | Pittsfield, MA | ||
| 1851/08/00 | While Mrs Melville stays at home, Herman Melville and Sarah Morewood camp with friends on Mt Greylock enjoying Brandy Cherries, champagne, port wine and rum. | Life | Mount Greylock Summit Historic District | Adams, MA | Port Wine | ||
| 1851/11/00 | In the dining room of the Little Red Inn in Lenox, Herman Melville presents an inscribed copy of his new novel, Moby-Dick, to his friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the man to whom the work was dedicated. | Author | Moby Dick (book) | Little Red Inn, Stockbridge | Stockbridge | ||
| 1851/11/14 | "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville is published in the United States by Harper and Brothers. The book will receive mixed reviews. | Author | Moby Dick (book) | ||||
| 1851/12/00 | Melville begins his next book, Pierre (1852), in which he anticipates the use of depth psychology by 20th century novelists. There is evidence that Melville suffered a near breakdown after finishing Pierre. | Author | |||||
| 1853/11/00 | "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" by Herman Melville is published in Putnam's Magazine. | Author | Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (Short Story) | ||||
| 1854/00/00 | "The Lightning-Rod Man" by Herman Melville is published. | Author | The Lightning-Rod Man (Short Story) | ||||
| 1855/00/00 | "Benito Cereno" by Herman Melville is published in Putnam's Monthly. | Author | Benito Cereno (Short Story) | ||||
| 1855/04/00 | "The Tartarus of Maids" by Herman Melville is published together with "The Paradise of Bachelors" in Harper's Magazine. | Author | The Tartarus of Maids (Short Story) | ||||
| 1856/00/00 | In poor health, Melville tours Europe and the Holy Land in 1856-57, stopping briefly on the voyage out to visit Hawthorne, the United States Consul in Liverpool. | Guest | Mrs Blodgets Boarding House, Liverpool | Duke Street | |||
| 1857/05/00 | After his return to the United States in May, 1857, Melville lectures intermittently in the east and middle west. | Work | |||||
| 1863/00/00 | Herman Melville sells "Arrowhead" to his brother Allan Melville and moves to New York City. Herman will return to the Pittsfield house for occasional visits. | Life | Herman Melville House, Pittsfield | Pittsfield, MA | |||
| 1866/00/00 | Herman Melville is appointed to a clerkship in the New York custom-house. | Work | National City Bank | New York City | |||
| 1885/12/31 | Melville retires as a customs inspector for New York City with a reputation for honesty in a notoriously corrupt institution. | Work | National City Bank | New York City | |||
| 1886/00/00 | Early in 1886, when Melville took up, or perhaps began, the work that became Billy Budd, he had in mind neither the plot of a novel nor any one of the characters as they later emerged in the course of his writing. - Hayford and Sealts, 1962 | Author | Billy Budd (book) | ||||
| 1887/00/00 | During the first two years of retirement, Melville constructs a narrative about Billy Budd, 1886-1887. | Author | Billy Budd (book) | ||||
| 1891/09/21 | Herman Melville dies of cardiac dilations at his residence (lost), 104 E 26th Street, NYC, of heart failure, aged 72. He will be buried next to his wife Elizabeth Shaw in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City. | Died | |||||
| 1962/00/00 | "Billy Budd" edited by Harrison Hayford and Merton M Sealts Jr is published by the University of Chicago Press. After several years of studying the original manuscript, Hayford and Sealts assembled what is now considered the correct, authoritative text. | Author | Billy Budd (book) | Houghton Library, Harvard | Cambridge, MA |
7 Creative Works by Herman Melville »
| Title | Type | Association | Y/M/D | Moniker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | Type | Association | Y/M/D | Moniker |
| Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life | Author | Book | 1846/02/26 | |
| Moby Dick (book) | Author | Makrystoria | 1851/11/14 |
|
| Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (Short Story) | Author | Short Story | 1853/11/00 |
|
| The Lightning-Rod Man (Short Story) | Author | Short Story | 1854/00/00 |
|
| Benito Cereno (Short Story) | Author | Short Story | 1855/00/00 |
|
| The Tartarus of Maids (Short Story) | Author | Short Story | 1855/04/00 |
|
| Billy Budd (book) | Author | Mezzobula | 1886/00/00 |
|
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.