Herman Melville born Melvill ; [ a ] August 1, β September 28, was an American novelist , short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick ; Typee , a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia ; and Billy Budd, Sailor , a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death Melville was not well known to the public, but , the centennial of his birth, was the starting point of a Melville revival.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet , but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee , his first book, and its sequel, Omoo , were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw.
Mardi , a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn and White-Jacket , both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick , which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities From to , Melville published short fiction in magazines, including " Benito Cereno " and " Bartleby, the Scrivener ". In , he traveled to England, toured the Near East , and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man He moved to New York in , eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. In , his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot.
