Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews (American Critical Archives)

583 Pages·2009·16.8 MB·English

by  Brian Higgins

AMERICAN CRITICAL ARCHIVES 6
Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews
The American Critical Archives
GENERAL EDITOR: M. Thomas Inge, Randolph-Macon College
1. Emerson and Thoreau: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Joel
Myerson
2. Edith Wharton: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by James W.
Tuttleton, Kristin O. Lauer, and Margaret P. Murray
3. Ellen Glasgow: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Dorothy M. Scura
4. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by John L.
Idol, Jr., and Buford Jones
5. William Faulkner: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by M. Thomas Inge
Herman Melville
The Contemporary Reviews
Edited by
Brian Higgins
University of Illinois at Chicago
Hershel Parker
University of Delaware
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521121156
© Cambridge University Press 1995
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1995
This digitally printed version 2009
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Herman Melville: the contemporary reviews / edited by Brian Higgins,
Hershel Parker,
p. cm. — (American critical archives)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-521-41423-7
1. Melville, Herman, 1819—1891—Criticism and interpretation.
2. American fiction—19th century—Book reviews. I. Higgins,
Brian, 1943- . II. Parker, Hershel. III. Series.
PS2387.H434 1995
813'.3—dc20 94-24175
CIP
Title pages of Melville's books reproduced courtesy The Newberry Library.
ISBN 978-0-521-41423-4 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-12115-6 paperback
Contents
Series Editor's Preface Page vii
Introduction ix
Typee(1846) 1
Omoo (1847) 83
Mardi (1849) 191
Redburn(1849) 253
White-Jacket (1850) 293
Moby-Dick (1851) 351
Pierre (1852) 417
Israel Potter (1855) 453
The Piazza Tales (1856) 467
The Confidence-Man (1857) 485
Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) 507
Clarel(1876) 529
John Marr and Other Sailors with Some Sea-Pieces (1888) 543
Billy Budd (posthumous) 547
Index 553

Series Editor's Preface
The American Critical Archives series documents a part of a writer's career that
is usually difficult to examine, that is, the immediate response to each work as
it was made public on the part of reviewers in contemporary newspapers and
journals. Although it would not be feasible to reprint every review, each volume
in the series reprints a selection of reviews designed to provide the reader with
a proportionate sense of the critical response, whether it was positive, negative,
or mixed. Checklists of other known reviews are also included to complete the
documentary record and allow access for those who wish to do further reading
and research.
The editor of each volume has provided an introduction that surveys the
career of the author in the context of the contemporary critical response.
Ideally, the introduction will inform the reader in brief of what is to be learned
by a reading of the full volume. The reader then can go as deeply as necessary
in terms of the kind of information desired—be it about a single work, a period
in the author's life, or the author's entire career. The intent is to provide quick
and easy access to the material for students, scholars, librarians, and general
readers.
When completed, the American Critical Archives should constitute a com-
prehensive history of critical practice in America, and in some cases England,
as the writers' careers were in progress. The volumes open a window on the
patterns and forces that have shaped the history of American writing and the
reputations of the writers. These are primary documents in the literary and
cultural life of the nation.
M. THOMAS INGE

Introduction
Herman Melville collected and scrutinized the reviews of his books, especially
in his early career, when he commented on them frequently in his letters and in
his first journal. In May 1846, three months after the publication of his first
book, Typee, a partly autobiographical, partly fictionalized account of his ad-
ventures in the Marquesas Islands, Melville wrote to his brother Gansevoort in
London (unaware that he had died more than two weeks earlier): "I need not
ask you to send me every notice of any kind that you see or hear of."x The
following September he listed for John Murray, his English publisher, the En-
glish reviews he had seen, and he asked Murray to send him any additional
ones he came across [Correspondence, 66). Melville's eagerness to see as many
of his reviews as possible reflects his awareness of their power. He had been
forced to agree to expurgate the American edition of Typee after the Presby-
terian paper the Evangelist began a crusade against its condemnation of mis-
sionary activities in Hawaii. The reviews of his second book would determine
whether or not he would have a literary career: After that book, Omoo, was
published in 1847, he said he would "follow it up" with a third only if it suc-
ceeded (Correspondence, 87). From the start, his reviews affected the sales of
each book he published, and frequently they also influenced the nature of the
next book he wrote. Early in 1852, his reputation damaged by some of
the reviews of his sixth book, The Whale or Moby-Dick (1851), he satirized
his reviewers in a section he added to one of his major works ,Pierre. In 1852,
the reviews of Pierre so wrecked his reputation that his next manuscript, The
Isle of the Cross, finished in May 1853, was (as far as we know) never pub-
lished. After a few more years of struggling to maintain his career, earning more
money as a magazine writer than from the three books he published from 1855
through 1857, he gave up trying to earn a living by writing fiction. In 1860, he
hoped to publish a volume called Poems, but his reputation was so poor that
at least two publishers turned the manuscript down, and it was never pub-
lished; we do not know what poems were in it, only that they were not long
poems. In the light of this history, to speak of Melville's contemporary reviews
as "influencing" his career is to employ a gross understatement.
Typee (published by John Murray in February 1846 under the title Narrative
of a Four Months' Residence Among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas
Islands; or, A Peep at Polynesian Life and the following month by Wiley and
Putnam in New York with the title Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, During