Herman Melville

This volume reprints virtually all the known contemporary reviews of Herman Melville’s writings from the 1840s until his death in 1891. Many of his reviews are reprinted from hard-to-locate contemporary newspapers and periodicals. These materials document the response of the reviewers to specific worlds and share the course of Melville’s nineteenth century reputation as travel writer, romancer, short-story writer, and poet.

• The volume reprints all the known contemporary reviews of Melville’s writings, with the exception of a few very short notices

Introduction; 1. Typee; 2. Omoo; 3. Mardi; and A Voyage Thither; 4. Redburn; 5. White-jacket; 6. Moby-Dick; 7. Pierre; or, The Ambiguities; 8. Israel Potter: his fifty years of exile; 9. The Piazza tales; 10. The confidence-man: his masquerade; 11. Battle-pieces and aspects of the war; 12. Clarel: a poem and pilgrimage in the Holy Land; Index.

‘A beautifully presented, meticulously researched volume.’ Borderlines